Senior PHP Developer

Senior PHP Developer (Dark Horse AI Platform) Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid/Remote Friendly) Team: Engineering Reports to: Engineering Leadership About the Role Gravity Lending is scaling Dark Horse, our internal AI and automation platform that powers intelligent workflows across our lending ecosystem — including our Loan Origination System (LOS), customer and lender portals, and internal operational tooling. We’re looking for a Senior PHP Developer who can design and build reliable, high-performance backend services that connect data, workflows, and AI-driven capabilities — securely, efficiently, and at scale. This role is ideal for an engineer who: Cares deeply about clean architecture and performance Enjoys working close to the data (MySQL-heavy systems) Is comfortable operating in regulated, PII-sensitive environments Wants to collaborate closely with ML engineers to bring AI features into real production systems (not demos) What You’ll Do Backend & API Development Build and maintain Dark Horse backend services using PHP 8+, including: APIs and service modules Internal tooling Workflow orchestration services Design secure, well-structured endpoints that support AI workflows: Chat and session services Tool/action execution Retrieval and orchestration requests Data & Performance Engineering Design and optimize MySQL data access patterns at scale: Indexing and query optimization Schema design Stored procedures where appropriate Tune performance across services using caching, background jobs, and profiling tools. Security & Compliance Implement secure handling of PII and sensitive financial data, including: Encryption and hashing strategies Access control and authorization Audit logging and traceability Safe data egress patterns Partner with Security to ensure Dark Horse services meet SOC-minded controls and privacy-by-design principles. Reliability & Engineering Excellence Lead by example on: Code quality and reviews Testing strategies Refactoring and technical documentation Improve platform reliability through: Idempotency and retry strategies Rate limiting and failure handling Incident-ready logging, metrics, and observability Cross-Functional Collaboration Work closely with Product and ML engineers to translate AI capabilities into stable, production-ready features. Integrate with third-party and internal services (credit, valuation, identity, LOS modules, messaging, and queues). Required Qualifications 6+ years of professional PHP development experience Strong command of PHP 8+, object-oriented design, and API architecture Deep experience with SQL/MySQL: Schema design Indexing strategies Query planning and performance tuning Experience building secure, production-grade REST services, including: Authentication and authorization Input validation Rate limiting Familiarity with modern engineering practices: CI/CD pipelines Automated testing Code reviews Git-based workflows Comfortable working in environments handling sensitive, regulated data Nice to Have FinTech, lending, underwriting, or regulated-data experience Experience integrating AI or LLM services, or building APIs used by AI agents Knowledge of encryption and hashing best practices: Salting / peppering strategies Key management Experience with queues and workers (SQS, RabbitMQ, Redis) Familiarity with SOC 2, auditability, and least-privilege system design Tech You’ll Likely Use PHP 8.2+, MySQL, Redis, Docker, Linux, Nginx, queues/workers, GitHub Actions (or similar CI), observability tooling, AWS services, JSON-based APIs. Compensation (Austin Base Salary) Minimum: $105,000 Target: $120,000 Maximum: $135,000 (Final compensation based on experience and scope of responsibility.) Pay: $105,000.00 - $135,000.00 per year Benefits: 401(k) Dental insurance Employee assistance program Employee discount Flexible spending account Health insurance Health savings account Life insurance Paid time off Vision insurance Work Location: Hybrid remote in Austin, TX 78728