Middle PHP Engineer

appflame — a Ukrainian IT company building world-class products: Hily, Taimi, AdConnect, Mailkeeper, and more.

Who we are today:

• 7 years on the market, 500+ employees, offices in Kyiv, London, and Limassol, plus a coworking space in Warsaw.
• In 2025, appflame ranked 5th among Ukraine's 50 best employers according to Forbes and won in the "Place for Growth" category.
• Our apps Hily and Taimi are among the Top 5 dating apps in the U.S., with over 70 million users. AdConnect and Mailkeeper build and scale our own B2B and B2C solutions.
  
  

Our mission: Flame up the world with Ukrainian products.

Our goals:

• Reach the top 5 product companies in the world.
• Become a unicorn — and turn Ukraine into a country where unicorns are born and thrive.
  
  

We're looking for daring, ambitious, and "a little crazy" people — those who love building real products and dream of launching cool startups. You have the ambition; we have the conditions to make it happen.

Your project:

Hily. It is a dating app that allows users to be truly themselves and enjoy dating as they are. On Hily, users become part of a community where people find genuine connections and meaningful relationships.

The app ranks among the Top 5 dating apps in the U.S. by downloads, competing with market leaders such as Tinder and Bumble.

Hily today: 40M users, 1.5B likes sent, 50M+ matches annually.

You will:

• Work on tasks that you can see directly in the application and even use the features you build.
• Be part of a cross-functional team - a full "mini-startup" within the company, where you will take on the role of a Backend Developer.
• Work with OKRs, allowing you to focus exclusively on high-impact work rather than busywork.
• Deal with high-load systems, plan releases, and, in some cases, roll out features gradually.
• Face real technical challenges every day.
• Have the opportunity to work with AI assistants if you're interested - they are already part of our environment and can be leveraged in your workflow.
  
  

We'll have a match if you:

• 3+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Have English at a B2 level or higher.
• A deep understanding of SOLID principles, strong OOP skills, and design patterns.
• Experience with PHP 8.4+.
• Hands-on experience with Laravel, MySQL, Redis, and Memcached.
• A forward-thinking mindset: you plan changes, deployments, and feature rollouts with impact and compatibility in mind.
• Experience leveraging AI coding agents to accelerate development, debugging, and test generation.
  
  

Will be an advantage:

• Experience with Elasticsearch.
• Experience with DDD methodology.
• Experience leveraging AI tools to optimize the software development lifecycle and automate routine engineering tasks.
  
  

What we offer:

• Work: Remote-first setup, modern offices with activities, and all the equipment you need, plus compensation to set up your remote workplace.
• Growth: Fair pay with regular reviews; after probation, compensation for education and English courses, Online Speaking Club, online library, and course access.
• Health & time off: Medical insurance coverage, psychologist consultations, unlimited paid sick days, and 31 paid vacation days/year (incl. public holidays).
• Team: Corporate events, team-building activities, and paid participation in sports competitions.
  
  

Why appflame?

• Build Ukrainian products that compete with the best players on the global market.
• Bring your own ideas to life instead of being a cog in the system.
• Direct contact with Snapchat, Facebook, Google, and Apple, and access to their best practices.
• Work with a global market and a massive audience.
• A team of like-minded people focused on results.
• Well-established processes and real opportunities to grow within the company.
• Transparent evaluation based on personal performance indicators.
  
  

Join our team — it's going to be hotter than you can imagine.

We are against all types of discrimination, bullying, and stereotypes. We provide equal employment opportunities regardless of race, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, health status or any other characteristics.