Senior Backend Engineer · Realtime Systems at Scale · Team Lead
Tbilisi, Georgia (UTC+4) · Working remotely
Backend engineer with 9 years on PHP 5 through 8, focused on realtime and high-concurrency systems.
- Built gps.ge from zero: a GPS fleet-monitoring platform sustaining 26,000+ concurrent device connections on PHP 8, Octane, WebSockets, Redis and MySQL. Its API powers fleet operations at TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Skytel.
- Built a facility access-control IoT platform from zero: a PHP backend orchestrating MQTT-connected ESP32 controllers and Raspberry Pi edge services, deployed at McDonald's among others.
- Currently lead a 3-engineer squad modernizing legacy jQuery/Laravel: architecture, sprint planning, and code review culture.
- Comfortable across the stack when it helps: Vue 3, React, TypeScript, Inertia, Tailwind.
Available for remote contract work. Registered Georgian Individual Entrepreneur, invoices as a contractor, no employer-of-record or visa sponsorship required.
Backend
Data & realtime
Frontend
Platform
Practices: SOLID, DDD, service/repository layers, API-first design, monolith-to-services migration, zero-downtime migrations, test-driven refactoring, mentoring, async remote collaboration.
| Role | Company | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Senior PHP Developer / Team Lead | Quiet Light | Aug 2024 - Present |
| Senior PHP Developer / Lead Architect | Casatrade | Sep 2021 - Present |
| Middle PHP Developer | Skytel | May 2021 - Sep 2021 |
| Lead Software Engineer (freelance) | All Digital | Sep 2016 - May 2021 |
Selected results:
- 2-3x faster response times on critical endpoints after SQL and data-access refactoring.
- Zero-downtime migration of a legacy database setup to MySQL 8.
- ~60% faster API responses via Redis caching of auth tokens and user data.
- Report and export generation cut from minutes to under 3 seconds.
- Centralized REST API serving 5+ internal applications, fully documented in OpenAPI with access-controlled Swagger docs.
- Phalcon ISP billing system supporting 5,000+ subscribers, with 3-5x faster query paths.
| Project | What it is | Stack |
|---|---|---|
| Zomboid Server Manager ⭐ 75 | Game server control panel: RCON, mod manager, scheduled backups, Discord webhooks, multi-arch (amd64/arm64) Docker bring-up in one command | PHP · TypeScript · Docker · Lua |
| IRONFRONT | Web multiplayer RTS. Server-authoritative match state over Laravel Reverb WebSockets: live server browser, rooms with stakes and spectators, presence, invites, coin ledger, Playwright e2e | Laravel 13 · PHP 8.4 · Postgres · Redis · Reverb · Vue 3 · PixiJS |
| Padel Access Control | Raspberry Pi door and lighting controller for a sports facility: keypad and OLED, one-time codes, relay control, operating modes, audit log, REST API over Cloudflare Tunnel, degrades to API-only without hardware | Python · systemd · Cloudflare Tunnel · GPIO |
| VirgoTA | Limit-order exchange: order matching at maker price, fund and asset locking, commission accounting, realtime trade notifications | Laravel 12 · Vue 3 · Inertia · PostgreSQL |
| Prava App | Driving-theory exam app compiled to native iOS and Android from a Laravel codebase via NativePHP Mobile, with Fortify auth and 2FA | Laravel 12 · React 19 · Inertia v2 · NativePHP |
Most of my production work lives in private repositories. Happy to walk through architecture and code in a call.
- Caucasus University - Graduate Program, Information Technology Management (Sep 2023 - Present)
- Caucasus University - BSc Computer Science (Sep 2018 - Jul 2022)
- TBC Academy - Front-end Development, React / Vue (Sep 2018 - Dec 2018)
Georgian (native) · English (C1) · Russian (B1)