About the role
Everything a maison's teams touch on ToldUntold passes through one Laravel API: the app advisors open in the store, the back office HQ runs programs from, the intelligence layer that ties content to sales. It is a modular monolith on PHP 8.4, with MariaDB and PostgreSQL behind it, pgvector for the AI features, and Redis with Horizon working through the queues.
We are hiring a senior engineer in Shenzhen to own this API. The data model, the module boundaries, the jobs, the integrations and the deployment that serves China from inside China would be yours. You would ship through GitHub pull requests with an extensive PHPUnit suite behind you, work closely with the front-end and platform engineers in the same office and with product in London, and see your work reach stores within days.
What you will do
- Design and evolve the data model and the module boundaries, and keep the monolith modular as the product grows.
- Build and tune the queue architecture on Redis and Horizon: media jobs, translation runs, notifications, imports.
- Own integrations with the systems maisons already run: identity, sales data feeds, whatever their stack requires.
- Look after the China deployment and its database replica, together with the platform engineer.
- Write tests as part of the work, and keep the suite fast enough that everyone keeps running it.
What we look for
- Years of production Laravel and PHP, recent enough that PHP 8.4 is familiar ground.
- Strong SQL across MariaDB and PostgreSQL. In this product, the data model is the product.
- Experience running queues at volume, and a calm way with them when they misbehave.
- Daily ease with AI coding agents; they are part of how we build here.
- Working Mandarin and English, and the habit of writing decisions down for colleagues eight time zones away.
Practicalities
Full-time, based in our Shenzhen office, with three days a week there as the default. The team works in Mandarin and English. Start as soon as you can.
How to apply
Write to careers@tolduntold.com with 'Senior Back-end Engineer' in the subject line. Send whatever shows your work best: a repository, a schema you would defend, a short write-up of a system you built and what you would now change. We read every message and reply to all.