About Gapstars
Gapstars is a Netherlands-based software development services provider that builds remote, agile teams in Sri Lanka and Portugal for innovative tech companies. Today, we are home to 300+ TechStars and innovative minds, turning scalable software into performance products that shape the future. Our partners are highly ambitious tech companies that are looking to conquer their respective markets.
About the role
As a BackEnd Developer, you will have a challenging and responsible role where you will work on our product, more specifically our internal tools and applications Our goal is to provide the best user experience, and we always strive to achieve this to the fullest. That's why we constantly push the technology and iterate on all features to deliver maximum results and nothing less than a wow effect.
Key Responsibilities
1. Development & Maintenance
Develop and maintain internal tools, web scraping systems, and applications
Build scalable solutions to collect, process, and integrate data from multiple sources
Contribute across the full product lifecycle: design, development, testing, and deployment
2. Production Reliability & Incident Ownership
Investigate and resolve complex production issues end-to-end
Debug across backend, database, infrastructure, and integrations
Fix problems directly in the codebase (no temporary workarounds)
Improve monitoring, logging, and observability
3. System Improvements at Scale
Identify performance bottlenecks and scalability challenges
Optimize APIs, queries, and workflows
Improve automation systems (email, integrations, scraping tools)
Reduce technical debt through structural improvements
4. Global Product Expansion
Adapt and scale applications to support new countries and markets
Ensure systems are flexible for internationalization and growth
5. Customer Impact & Collaboration
Partner with Customer Success teams on technical escalations
Translate customer pain points into engineering solutions
Resolve issues impacting customer retention and product adoption
Contribute to improving Net Revenue Retention (NRR) through system stability
6. Research & Innovation
Explore and implement new technologies, tools, and frameworks
Continuously improve performance, scalability, and user experience
4+ years of professional experience as a software developer in a full-stack or backend-focused role.
Proficiency in PHP 8+; experience with the Slim framework (is a plus), or any other modern PHP framework.
Ability to contribute effectively across multiple stages of product development, from design to deployment.
Hands-on experience with AWS
Experience with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Familiarity with DevOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and environment management.
Experience with PHPUnit for testing.
Comfortable working in a Mac-based development environment.
Excellent communication and teamwork.
Hands-on coder who keeps code simple, clean, and readable.
Nice to Have
Experience with ticketing systems (Hubspot, ServiceNow, JIRA or Zendesk)
Experience building frontend applications using React (Angular or Vue also acceptable with strong expertise).
Knowledge of email systems and deliverability
Experience with system scaling and performance optimization
Familiarity with frontend debugging
Experience working with high-growth or SaaS platforms
Why This Role Is Attractive
You own production systems, not just tickets
You solve real-world, high-impact engineering problems
You directly influence product quality and customer experience
You work across backend, infrastructure, and customer systems
You contribute to business impact, including revenue and retention
You gain full system visibility and engineering autonomy
"Gapstars is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate based on race, national origin, gender, disability, or age. Your personal information collected during the application process is handled following our privacy policy and used exclusively for recruitment and hiring purposes only"
