Backend Developer -PHP

Senior Backend Developer PHP/Symfony – AI & E-Commerce (m/f/d) About The Company Hygi.de GmbH & Co. KG is a leading German online retailer for medical products, hygiene supplies, and cleaning products. Since 2003, the company has continued to expand its offering and now serves more than 3.2 million customers with a range of over 140,000 products. Around 300 employees contribute their expertise and commitment to the company’s growth. Hygi.de combines a modern digital infrastructure with short decision-making paths, collaboration across teams, and a culture that encourages innovation, ownership, and practical ideas. About The Role As a Senior Backend Developer, you will help shape the technology behind a large-scale e-commerce shop. You will join a backend team of four developers and work closely with the Shop Team Lead, product owners, and colleagues across the business. This is a hands-on senior role with influence over architecture, technical standards, and the development of high-impact shop capabilities. You will also help define how AI can support software engineering and customer-facing commerce. You will apply AI coding tools thoughtfully, evaluate new use cases, and help turn promising ideas into reliable, maintainable solutions with measurable business value. The role offers the opportunity to connect sound engineering decisions with outcomes such as customer experience, conversion, and efficient operations. Qualifications - At least five years of backend development experience using modern PHP and Symfony. - Strong understanding of software architecture, such as domain-driven design, modular monoliths, microservices, or event-driven systems. - Excellent knowledge of MySQL, including performance optimization, caching, and queueing. - Practical experience with AI coding assistants or coding agents, and the ability to assess generated code critically. - A balanced approach to technical quality, maintainability, performance, and commercial value. - Very good German and good English language skills. - Experience with LLM APIs, RAG, embeddings, vector databases, agentic workflows, e-commerce platforms, or ERP, payment, and logistics integrations is an advantage. - Mentoring experience or the ability to support other developers’ technical growth is welcome. Responsibilities - Develop and evolve backend architecture using PHP 8.x and Symfony, making informed decisions about scalability, maintainability, and performance. - Design and deliver complex e-commerce features across checkout, pricing, product assortment, search, and fulfillment. - Promote code quality through clean code practices, automated testing, code reviews, and CI/CD. - Use AI coding assistants and agents, such as Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, to support development, refactoring, testing, and documentation. - Help establish effective AI-supported development workflows and review AI-generated code for quality, security, and suitability. - Identify and assess AI applications for the shop, including intelligent search, product data enrichment, recommendations, and process automation. - Translate business goals into robust technical solutions and consider relevant measures such as conversion, average basket value, margin, and process costs. - Act as a technical partner to product owners, developers, and business teams, sharing knowledge and contributing to sound decisions. The technology environment includes PHP 8.x, Symfony, MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Git, CI/CD, on-premise hosting, Jira, and Confluence. Benefits - A secure position in a growing e-commerce company with the opportunity to influence technology and ways of working. - Competitive compensation and an employer contribution to occupational pension provision. - 30 days of annual leave and flexible working hours with flextime. - Individual training and professional development opportunities. - Employee discounts across the company’s product range. - Modern workstations and a digital working environment. - Bike leasing, regular team events, and shared activities. - Complimentary drinks, fruit, and snacks. Equal Opportunity Hygi.de GmbH & Co. KG values a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, identities, ages, religions, abilities, and perspectives. Our employees’ varied experiences strengthen our culture and help us create better solutions together. We encourage qualified candidates to apply and look forward to learning how you could contribute to our team.