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Sr. Software Engineer (PHP)

US-Remote

At Higher Logic, engagement happens here. As the industry-leading, human-focused engagement platform we deliver powerful online communities and communication tools to organizations looking to build, retain, and grow their member or customer base. We’re obsessed with engagement and, with over 13 years of experience in the industry, we’ve got it down to a science. We are a global company with offices throughout the US, Canada, and Australia. We serve more than 3,000 customers, representing over 350,000 online communities with over 200 million users across 42 countries worldwide.

Our team is a thriving community of authentic people with diverse experiences and perspectives. We are honest and genuine and believe that sharing ideas and feedback openly helps us to be successful. We believe that diversity and empathy bring us #AllTogether to make us stronger. We learn from failure and successes because both help us to grow and learn. We strive to understand the why behind our actions and bring our best selves to work every day.

At Higher Logic, engagement happens here. As the industry-leading, human-focused engagement platform, we deliver powerful online communities and communication tools to organizations looking to build, retain, and grow their member or customer base. We’re obsessed with engagement—and with 13+ years of experience in the industry, we’ve got it down to a science. We are a global company with offices throughout the US, Canada, and Australia. We serve more than 3,000 customers, representing over 350,000 online communities with over 200 million users across 42 countries worldwide.

Our team is a thriving community of authentic people with diverse experiences and perspectives. We are honest and genuine and believe that sharing ideas and feedback openly helps us to be successful. We believe that diversity and empathy bring us #AllTogether to make us stronger. We learn from failure and successes because both help us to grow and learn. We strive to understand the why behind our actions and bring our best selves to work every day.

Job Description

Higher Logic Vanilla is looking for a Senior Software Developer (Backend / PHP) who thrives at the intersection of product engineering, scalability, and modern developer workflows—including AI-assisted development. You’ll help build and evolve the core application systems that power rich community experiences for millions of users worldwide.

This role is primarily focused on backend and platform development, but success in this position requires strong product thinking, sound engineering judgment, and the ability to work effectively in a large, mature application with complex integrations, extensibility points, and performance considerations.

This is a great fit for someone who can own meaningful technical work, raise engineering standards, and use AI tools responsibly to accelerate delivery without compromising quality, security, or maintainability.

What You'll Do:

  • Build, maintain, and ship high-quality product features in a multidisciplinary Agile team.
  • Design and evolve backend systems that support large-scale, highly configurable community applications.
  • Work across core application layers, APIs, integrations, and platform capabilities to deliver reliable end-to-end solutions.
  • Write reliable, well-tested code; participate in code review; mentor teammates through thoughtful feedback and shared patterns.
  • Triage, debug, and resolve production issues efficiently; collaborate closely with product, QA, support, and other engineers to close the loop quickly.
  • Contribute to application performance, scalability, resilience, and maintainability across a large and evolving codebase.
  • Help shape technical direction by improving architecture, coding standards, tooling, documentation, and team development practices.
  • Participate in guild or cross-team engineering discussions to strengthen backend practices and promote sustainable patterns across the organization.

AI-Forward Development Responsibilities

  • We’re looking for a software developer who is excited to rethink how software is built—someone eager to work in an AI-native, agentic development environment, where developers collaborate with intelligent agents to design, build, and iterate faster.
  • Use AI-powered IDEs and assistants (e.g., Cursor, Copilot-style tools) to accelerate implementation, refactoring, debugging, and test generation—while ensuring correctness, security, and maintainability.
  • Apply AI thoughtfully: write strong prompts, verify outputs, and incorporate guardrails such as automated tests, static analysis, code review, and runtime validation.
  • Help define best practices for AI-assisted engineering, including where automation is most effective, what requires human review, and how to evaluate output quality in a production environment.
  • Partner on AI-enabled product and platform initiatives where relevant, including areas like moderation tooling, content workflows, search and discovery, summarization, admin productivity, and internal developer efficiency.

What We’re Looking For (Required)

  • Strong understanding of Agile values and principles.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals, including object-oriented design, modular architecture, and maintainable coding practices.
  • Experience building and supporting production applications at scale, with attention to performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
  • Experience designing and working with APIs and service boundaries in complex systems.
  • Ability to debug effectively, reason through production issues, and make sound tradeoffs in a large application environment.
  • Awareness of security best practices and experience identifying or addressing vulnerabilities in web applications.
  • Comfort working in containerized or modern local development environments and with contemporary engineering workflows.
  • Comfort with Git-based workflows, pull requests, and collaborative code review.
  • Practical experience using AI coding tools (Cursor or equivalent) in day-to-day development, including validating generated code and avoiding insecure or low-quality patterns.

Desired Qualifications

  • 5+ years of professional software development experience building and maintaining production web applications.
  • Experience working in a large, mature application or platform with significant business logic, legacy considerations, and evolving architecture.
  • Experience with extensible or modular systems such as themes, plugins, integrations, or configurable platform features.
  • Experience working with asynchronous processing, background jobs, queues, or event-driven patterns.
  • Familiarity with database-backed applications and the performance considerations that come with them.
  • Experience with testing practices and tools that build confidence through automation.
  • Strong product instincts: you communicate tradeoffs well, care about user outcomes, and understand how technical decisions affect the customer experience.
  • Experience contributing to technical mentoring, architectural improvements, or shared engineering standards.

What You’ll Earn

  • Competitive compensation.
  • Comprehensive health benefits package.
  • 401(k) plan with employer match.
  • Healthcare and dependent-care flexible spending account.
  • Company short-term and long-term disability insurance.
  • Company culture that recognizes its employees.
  • Room for growth and development and management that cares about your professional growth and will help you achieve your goals.
  • Significant advancement opportunities for outstanding performers.

EEO Disclosure

Higher Logic is committed to equal opportunity.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Higher Logic is committed to ensuring that its application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. If you believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or to submit an application, please contact us by emailing HRBenefits@higherlogic.com

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I certify that I personally completed this application and affirm that the information provided and/or incorporated by reference on my application for employment with Higher Logic and all other information I provide during the screening/hiring process is true, accurate and complete and that I have withheld nothing that would affect my application unfavorably. I understand and agree that any false or misleading information, misrepresentations, or omissions may disqualify me from further consideration for employment and may result in dismissal if discovered at a later date. I understand that completion of my application does not assure me of a position with Higher Logic. I also understand that neither my application nor any other document constitutes a contract of employment for a specific term and that any employment relationship that may be established with be “at will” and may be terminated at any time, for any reason or for no reason, by me or Higher Logic. I also understand that no representative of Higher Logic has the authority to enter into an employment agreement, guarantee employment for a specified period, or modify any of the foregoing, other than the President, who would need to do so in a written document that expressly revises, modifies, deletes, or supersedes the policy of at-will employment. Any oral or written statements to the contrary are hereby expressly disavowed and should not be relied upon by any prospective or existing employee. *
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