Senior Backend Developer (Laravel) GoIELTS.aiRemote-Friendly | Full-Time | Senior LevelGoIELTS.ai is the leading AI-powered IELTS preparation platform serving the GCC scholarship market. We are looking for a Senior Backend Developer to lead the development of our Laravel APIs, AI evaluation pipelines, and payment infrastructure.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Responsibilities━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Build and maintain Laravel (PHP 8.x) REST APIs powering our Next.js 14 frontendIntegrate and optimize LLM pipelines (GPT-4o, OpenRouter) for Writing and Speaking evaluationDesign PostgreSQL schemas, indexes, and optimized queries (pgvector is a plus)Manage Redis-backed Laravel Queues for AI evaluation workloadsDevelop middleware patterns including CostGuard, Cache, Retry, CircuitBreaker, and MetricsIntegrate services such as Stripe, PostHog, n8n, and SentryTroubleshoot and resolve production issues end-to-endContribute to CI/CD workflows and infrastructure decisions using GitLab Runner━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Requirements━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━4+ years of production experience with Laravel (PHP 8.x)Strong PostgreSQL knowledge including schema design, indexing, and query optimizationHands-on experience integrating LLM APIs in production environments(OpenAI / Anthropic / OpenRouter)Experience with Redis and Laravel QueuesStrong REST API design skills for React / Next.js applicationsExperience integrating Stripe or similar payment gatewaysSolid understanding of Git, code reviews, and CI/CD practicesStrong written and spoken English skills for remote collaboration━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Nice to Have━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Experience with pgvector, embeddings, or semantic searchBackground in EdTech or language-learning productsExperience with audio or pronunciation APIs(Speechace, Whisper, ELSA, Azure Speech)Experience with Arabic, RTL, or MENA-focused productsAWS or cloud infrastructure experienceFamiliarity with PostHog, GA4, or BigQuery analytics━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━What We Offer━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━High ownership and end-to-end feature deliveryRemote-friendly culture with flexible working hoursDirect collaboration with the founderCompetitive compensation packageOpportunity to make a real impact in a fast-growing GCC EdTech product