Backend Developer (PHP/Laravel/Symfony)
Deskpro, United Kingdom
Job Description
At Deskpro, we make helpdesk software and we have customers of all shapes and sizes from across the globe, including Vodafone, Microsoft, NHS, and Panasonic. Deskpro is a large product with a large variety of features and modules, from email, chat, and voice, to blog posts, knowledgebase, and guides, and everything in between. There's always something new to build.
We have a Wimbledon office but remote opportunities are available for UK-based candidates who can't commute in.
View our careers page
What you will do as a backend engineer
As a backend engineer, you will help build new features and modules, you'll be involved in shaping our underlying product frameworks and our internal processes like code reviews and deployment, and you'll get to participate in feature planning and have real input on the direction we take the product and the company as a whole.
You'll be joining a small team where your specific experience will have great impact. You will have a lot of autonomy over your own projects and you will get to use your expertise to lead by example.
Deskpro is a small company, and that means you will sometimes be expected to dip in and out of various roles as needs arise. You will learn a lot through the varied work, and you will get satisfaction in shipping software that gets used by thousands.
Technology we use and where we're going
Most of the Deskpro product backend is written in PHP (Symfony, Laravel) with the primary data store being MySQL. The frontend is Typescript/React (with our own component library) and our primary APIs are GraphQL.
Most of our cloud services we run, such as internal services and our telephony product, are written in Typescript/Node and run on AWS either serverless or dockerized. But we use lots of other technologies like Elastic, Redis, and services offered by AWS like DynamoDB . We even have tools and services written in Kotlin and Go. We're big fans of using the right tool for the job.
Why should you be interested?
- You'll get to use and learn about many different products, APIs and technologies. Deskpro is the central hub for a lot of companies, and we're always adding new features and modules and integrations.
- You'll get to work with real customers and get a peek into how other businesses operate.
- You'll get to learn about scaling software as well as scaling the SaaS platform as a whole.
- You'll get to try out new technology. We are constantly updating our stack and are always on the lookout for tools that will help us be more productive.
You are a good fit for the role if...
- You have an earnest interest in developing software with a desire to learn more about the craft.
- You have a lot of experience with PHP (with Symfony or Laravel), but you are not married to PHP. You will be expected to pick up new technology and stacks where necessary. The best tool for the job is not always PHP.
- You have excellent written and verbal communication skills. We are big believers in "writing stuff up", everything from spec's to dev docs to RFC's. You need to be able to know your audience and communicate clearly.
- You enjoy solving problems yourself and like working in a "get stuff done" environment. We're a small team and we all generally just get on with things in a fairly autonomous manner. You won't be micro-managed.
Examples of projects we've been working on lately
- Voice -- Incoming and outgoing calling from the browser, including features likes automated call routing and simple IVRs.
- AWS -- Moving all our infrastructure to AWS. This has included some ambitious projects like re-writing the email parser to make it more efficient.
- Reports -- New reporting system with dashboards, scheduled reports, and sharing.
- Apps platform -- A platform that allows third-parties to create "apps" that run within Deskpro.
- Filtering and search -- New filtering and search system to improve efficiency, accuracy, and UX.
- Social / Multi-channel messaging -- we are building out generic data structures with flexible ingress APIs to allow connecting Deskpro to any messaging channel including social sites like Twitter and Facebook, but we also envision integrations with systems like eBay messages or Apple/Google app stores. We'll be able to process any kind of communication.
- New GraphQL API backends.
And we have a lot more projects coming up including social integrations (Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc), asset tracking, approvals, and so much more.
Requirements
- Strong experience building web apps with PHP and Symfony and/or Laravel. Our main product is written in PHP.