Principal Software Engineer (PHP)

Company

hirify.global is an educational technology organization serving more than 17 million students and educators across 150+ countries through research-backed learning products including Gizmos, Raz-Plus, and Reflex.

What you will do

• Investigate complex applications, codebases, data flows, integrations, dependencies, and operational behavior to identify root causes and constraints.
• Design, develop, and support production systems while contributing code to projects, migrations, prototypes, architectural changes, and difficult technical investigations.
• Guide the evolution of mature products through incremental replacement, modularization, API enablement, migration, strangler patterns, and other evidence-based modernization approaches.
• Shape technical direction across the Literacy product area, partnering with engineering leaders, architects, Product, and Design on shared capabilities, identity, data, integrations, and cross-product decisions.
• Coach senior engineers and technical leads through design discussions, investigations, pairing, implementation, and code review.
• Use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully, identify valuable AI opportunities, and prototype AI-enabled solutions with attention to privacy, security, quality, cost, and responsible use.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including experience operating as a senior technical leader on complex software systems.
• Recent hands-on experience designing, developing, and supporting production systems using PHP, MySQL, Java, and MS SQL Server at Principal or Staff Engineer level.
• Strong application architecture skills covering codebases, APIs, data models, integrations, dependencies, failure modes, testing, and operational behavior.
• Exceptional ability to investigate complex technical problems, build a coherent mental model of complicated applications, and communicate it effectively.
• Strong technical judgment and the ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs across immediate needs, maintainability, risk, complexity, customer value, cost, and team capacity.
• Experience evolving mature, long-lived software systems and handling technical constraints, incremental change, modernization, migrations, or significant system evolution.
• Recent hands-on engineering experience and willingness to continue contributing meaningful production code.
• Ability to turn ambiguous technical situations into clear problems, options, recommendations, and executable paths; take strong technical positions; and influence without formal authority.
• Experience developing the technical judgment and capabilities of other experienced engineers.
• Practical fluency with modern AI-assisted software development and understanding of contemporary AI capabilities, limitations, and development patterns.

Nice to have

• Experience with complex application platforms containing significant dependencies, integrations, or accumulated technical constraints.
• Experience integrating systems with different architectures, data models, authentication approaches, or technology stacks.
• Experience with sensitive data, identity, authentication, privacy, or security concerns.
• Experience working across product boundaries on shared capabilities and integrated customer experiences.
• Education technology experience or experience in domains with complex customer and operational environments.
• Experience building or contributing to AI-enabled product capabilities in production.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote First work environment designed around flexibility, trust, collaboration, inclusion, and results.
• Remote employees must have reliable cable or fiber-optic broadband with at least 10 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload.
• Active participation in video-based interviews and ongoing virtual meetings with the camera on is expected.
• Remote-office setup cost reimbursement is available.
• The organization supports reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants with disabilities.

Hiring process

• Video-based interviews are part of the recruiting process.
• Using note-taking tools, reference materials, or AI-powered tools during interviews or other selection activities is prohibited unless prior written approval is obtained; accommodation requests should be discussed with Talent Acquisition in advance.