Company Description

Build an industry-leading AI-as-a-service platform as part of a top-tier global team funded by the world's top investors. Work on cutting-edge new product development, with a highly skilled and committed team that delivers excellence in AI performance and flexibility. By combining proprietary hardware with accelerated software and orchestration, Runware delivers blazing-fast image generation at incredibly low cost. No image degradation, just supercharged image generation through a well-designed API that supports the entire Flux and Stable Diffusion ecosystem, including technologies like ControlNet, LoRAs, IP-Adapters, InstantID, and more.

About the role:

Runware AI is looking for a Staff-level Vanilla PHP Developer to take ownership of our user systems and backend orchestration layers. You’ll be responsible for designing and implementing clean, modular PHP code (without frameworks) while ensuring architectural simplicity, codebase maintainability, and high-quality integration with frontend and API services.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement core backend systems in Vanilla PHP, including user account management, session handling, role-based access control, and internal service logic.
• Develop and extend an existing Symfony-based system, established alongside our vanilla PHP applications.
• Design interfaces and data flows for smooth integration with frontend applications (JavaScript/TypeScript) and external APIs (REST/GraphQL).
• Define and enforce coding standards, implement static analysis, and maintain strong test coverage.
• Continuously refactor and modularize legacy components for clarity, reusability, and separation of concerns (e.g., following SOLID and DDD principles).
• Optimize backend performance and minimize stateful dependencies, keeping infrastructure stateless and horizontally scalable.
• Make strategic decisions around data modeling (MySQL, Couchbase, Clickhouse), caching (e.g., Redis), and request routing (e.g., via Nginx or FastCGI).
• Collaborate with the DevOps team to support deployment pipelines, manage environment configurations, and contribute to infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Ansible, Docker, low-level Linux) to ensure reliable and scalable backend operations.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with frontend, infra, and ML engineers to build consistent, reliable interfaces and shared abstractions.

Requirements

• 8+ years of backend development experience, with deep expertise in modern, framework-free PHP.
• 1+ years of experience with Symfony
• Demonstrated ability to design backend architecture that is clean, extensible, and easy to maintain over time.
• Strong command of HTTP, session management, JWT, CSRF, and secure authentication patterns.
• Experience integrating with frontend apps (SPA, SSR) and external/internal APIs in performance-critical environments.
• Familiarity with CI/CD workflows, containerized development (Docker), and monitoring/logging tools is a plus.
• Passion for reducing complexity, eliminating redundancy, and keeping codebases lean and maintainable.
• This role is ideal for a backend architect who thrives in a minimalistic, high-ownership environment and can make deep technical decisions that shape how we build and scale. If you're driven by clarity, elegance, and performance, let’s talk!