Software Engineer at International Scholars Program

Role Overview

You will be responsible for the backend core of our web products, turning product requirements into reliable, secure server-side logic. Your day-to-day work involves writing PHP code, maintaining existing services, building RESTful APIs, and collaborating with frontend developers to ship features without downtime or regressions. This role matters because our customers depend on fast, stable integrations and data flows, so your attention to performance and security directly shapes the quality of the entire platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend features and services using native PHP and the Laravel framework, ensuring alignment with our architecture and coding standards.
• Develop, document, and maintain REST APIs that are consumed by web and mobile clients, paying close attention to versioning, response formatting, and error handling.
• Diagnose issues in existing applications, including legacy codebases, and provide fixes that improve stability without disrupting business logic.
• Connect external services such as payment gateways, messaging systems, and data providers using well-structured API integration patterns.
• Optimize MySQL databases by refining table schemas, writing efficient queries, and adding indexes based on real usage patterns and performance bottlenecks.
• Write automated tests for critical business logic and API endpoints, then participate in code reviews to catch defects early and maintain high quality.
• Collaborate closely with product owners, frontend developers, and designers to clarify requirements and ensure backend solutions align with user-facing behavior.
• Apply strong security principles to authentication, authorization, and data validation, protecting sensitive information across all touchpoints.

Requirements & Qualifications

• At least three years of professional PHP development experience, with a solid command of object-oriented programming and modern language features.
• Hands-on experience with Laravel or a comparable PHP framework, including its routing, ORM, middleware, and service container concepts.
• Proven ability to design and consume REST APIs, including authentication flows, request validation, and proper HTTP status code usage.
• Deep working knowledge of MySQL, from database design and normalization to query analysis, indexing strategies, and performance tuning.
• Experience integrating third-party APIs and web services, handling rate limits, timeouts, retries, and asynchronous processing when necessary.
• Familiarity with Git workflows, pull requests, and collaborative development practices in a small or medium-sized engineering team.
• Understanding of authentication and authorization mechanisms such as sessions, tokens, and role-based access control, with the ability to implement them safely.
• Suitable troubleshooting mindset for maintaining and debugging existing systems, including log analysis and systematic root-cause identification.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, comfortable explaining technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders and documenting your work clearly.