Lead Backend Developer

We're looking for a Backend Developer Lead to take technical ownership of the core platform at Ultimate Guitar — the world's largest destination for musicians, with over 14 million monthly active users. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll drive architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and own the technical direction of the platform — while staying close to the code.

We are actively integrating AI and automation into all areas of the business and expect candidates with a mindset focused on improving efficiency and delivering a better user experience.

What is in it for you?

• Real impact at scale. Your work will reach 14M+ musicians every month — across the platform that defines how the world learns and plays guitar.
• Ownership from day one. You'll shape the technical direction of the platform, not just execute tickets. We trust our leads to drive decisions.
• A team that values craft. We allocate dedicated capacity to technical debt, run regular architecture discussions, and take engineering quality seriously — not just velocity.
• Room to grow. Direct path to broader engineering leadership as the company scales, with full support for learning new tools and practices.

• Design and evolve scalable backend architecture and core platform services
• Lead technical initiatives from solution design and estimation through production release
• Develop new functionality, improve existing systems, and reduce technical debt
• Ensure system scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability
• Optimize databases, APIs, caching layers, and background processing
• Identify and resolve production incidents, bottlenecks, and technical risks
• Participate in architectural decision-making and long-term platform evolution
• Conduct code reviews and maintain engineering quality standards
• Mentor developers, support onboarding, and provide technical leadership within the team
• Collaborate with Product, Analytics, QA, and other engineering teams

Technical

• 5–7+ years of commercial PHP development experience
• Strong knowledge of modern PHP (8.0+) and backend engineering best practices
• Solid hands-on experience with Yii2
• Experience designing scalable backend systems with a strong grasp of software architecture and system design principles
• Strong MySQL experience: schema design, indexing, query optimization, performance tuning
• Experience with high-load production systems and application performance optimization
• Experience designing APIs and service integrations
• Solid Git workflows, code review practices, and CI/CD experience
• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, and root-cause analysis skills

Leadership & Ownership

• Proven experience leading development teams or major technical initiatives
• Ability to independently drive projects from design to production
• Experience working with large legacy codebases and driving incremental modernisation without disrupting business operations
• Strong estimation, planning, prioritisation, and risk management skills
• Experience mentoring engineers and supporting their professional growth

Soft skills

• Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset
• Effective communication and collaboration in cross-functional teams
• High autonomy, accountability, and product ownership
• Product-oriented thinking with a focus on business impact

Nice to have

• Interest in music and willingness to go deep on the product domain
• Experience building large-scale consumer products
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.)