Senior/ Lead PHP Engineer (with AI Skills)

Toronto time zone. Project duration - 3 months.

We're looking for a mature, Senior/Lead PHP Engineer with deep Laravel expertise and hands-on experience building or integrating agentic AI systems. You'll take ownership of complex backend features end-to-end, mentor other engineers, and help shape how AI-driven automation and agents fit into our product and internal workflows.

About the client:

Our client is a leading online car marketplace group operating across Europe and North America, bringing together market-leading brands to shape the future of our industry by combining the best of both regions.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain robust backend services and APIs using PHP and Laravel

• Own features from technical design through deployment and monitoring

• Integrate and orchestrate agentic AI workflows (e.g., LLM-based agents, tool-calling pipelines, autonomous task runners) into existing products or internal tooling

• Improve system performance, reliability, and security across the stack

• Stay current with the PHP/Laravel ecosystem and emerging agentic AI tools and patterns

What You Need to Succeed:

• 6+ years of professional PHP development experience

• 4+ years building applications with Laravel (or comparable modern PHP framework experience with strong Laravel proficiency)

• Solid database skills (MySQL/PostgreSQL), including query optimization and schema design

• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and cloud deployment (AWS, GCP, or similar)

• Strong communication skills and the judgment to work independently on ambiguous problems

• Hands-on GenAI experience — you've built with LLM APIs, tool/function calling, retrieval, agents, or agent frameworks and put them into real workflows.

• Modern AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) are part of how you work day to day.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills — you work well in a team, share your opinions clearly, and can move a topic forward with people across functions.

• Solid engineering fundamentals: testing, debugging, code quality, and getting things production-ready.

• English - at least Upper Intermediate+

• Work in EDT (Toronto) time zone

We offer:

• Flexible working format - remote, office-based or flexible

• A competitive salary and good compensation package

• Personalized career growth

• Professional development tools (mentorship program, tech talks and trainings, centers of excellence, and more)

• Active tech communities with regular knowledge sharing

• Education reimbursement

• Memorable anniversary presents

• Corporate events and team buildings

• Other location-specific benefits

• not applicable for freelancers