Senior PHP Application Engineer - Singapore - Hybrid - East Coast

Senior PHP Application Engineer | Hybrid (Singapore)

Location: Singapore (East Coast ) – Hybrid

We are looking for a Senior PHP Application Engineer to join an engineering team responsible for maintaining, stabilising, and improving business-critical PHP-based applications and integrations.

This role is focused on keeping existing systems reliable and performant, while also supporting ongoing improvements and gradual modernisation of legacy platforms. It is not purely greenfield development — the ability to work confidently with existing codebases, understand real production behaviour, and make safe, low-risk changes is essential.

You will work in a hybrid setup from our Singapore office, collaborating closely with product, delivery, architecture, QA, DevOps, infrastructure, DBA, and security teams to support stable delivery and reduce production risk.

What You’ll Be Doing

In this role, you will:

• Maintain, stabilise, and enhance existing PHP applications, services, and integrations supporting core business operations
• Investigate and resolve production issues including defects, performance problems, data inconsistencies, and integration failures
• Deliver new features and enhancements while ensuring changes remain safe, maintainable, and production-aware
• Work with legacy and modern PHP codebases, improving understanding of system behaviour through code analysis and debugging
• Refactor and improve existing code where appropriate to increase maintainability, reliability, security, and testability
• Build and support integrations across internal systems, APIs, third-party platforms, and business applications
• Work with product and delivery teams to refine requirements, clarify edge cases, and understand business impact
• Collaborate with technical leads and architects to align solutions with broader engineering direction and standards
• Support QA teams with defect reproduction, regression testing, and release readiness activities
• Work with DevOps, DBA, infrastructure, and security teams to resolve environment, deployment, database, and performance issues
• Participate in code reviews and help improve engineering standards across PHP systems
• Document system behaviour, technical decisions, integration flows, and support procedures where gaps exist
• Support incident investigation and root cause analysis for production issues
• Identify technical debt, fragile components, and system risks, and propose practical improvement approaches
• Share knowledge and mentor other engineers where appropriate, especially around legacy system behaviour and safe change practices

What You Bring

• 5+ years of professional PHP development experience
• Strong hands-on experience working with existing or legacy PHP applications
• Experience with modern PHP frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, or similar, alongside comfort working in non-framework or older codebases
• Strong understanding of relational databases (SQL, data modelling, query optimisation, and performance considerations)
• Experience building and maintaining REST APIs and system integrations
• Strong grasp of OOP, design patterns, secure coding practices, error handling, and maintainable architecture
• Proven experience diagnosing production issues, defects, and performance bottlenecks
• Ability to work with incomplete documentation and build understanding through debugging and collaboration
• Experience with Git-based workflows, CI/CD practices, and structured release processes
• Strong collaboration skills across engineering, QA, product, DevOps, and infrastructure teams
• Ability to balance short-term fixes with long-term system stability and maintainability
• Clear communication skills and strong technical ownership mindset

Nice to Have

• Experience with MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or similar relational databases
• Exposure to frontend technologies such as React, Vue.js, or TypeScript for full-stack support
• Experience in ERP, e-commerce, warehouse, order management, logistics, or finance systems
• Experience with middleware, event-driven systems, queues, scheduled jobs, or data synchronisation
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, Linux environments, or cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)
• Experience with automated testing strategies for legacy systems (unit, integration, regression testing)
• Understanding of caching, performance tuning, observability, logging, and monitoring practices
• Experience supporting gradual modernisation of legacy platforms without disrupting operations
• Background in distribution, manufacturing, electronics, or B2B operational environments