Aleksandr Lyubimov — Senior Backend PHP Developer

👤 Profile

Age: 23 years · Novokuznetsk, Russia

Backend PHP developer with 6+ years of commercial experience. For the last 2+ years — Lead Backend / DevOps at a product company: Seenday, a photo services marketplace with 900+ sellers and 10,000+ orders per month. Strong in payment logic, integrations, breaking up monoliths and running own infrastructure.

💻 Core stack

PHP 8 Yii2 Laravel Symfony Python Go PostgreSQL MySQL Redis Kafka Debezium Docker GitLab CI/CD Nginx Linux

🎯 What I am looking for

A Senior or Lead Backend PHP role in a product team: payments and billing, integrations, service architecture, load. Full-time — remote, hybrid or on-site with relocation.

🧠 Professional competencies

IT education: vocational degree in Information Systems, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (KIT college, 2024).
Additional training: GeekBrains — FullStack Developer; Synergy University — Python Developer.
6+ years of commercial backend development in PHP, the last 2+ years as Lead Backend at a product company.
Designing microservices and extracting services from a monolith.
Payment logic: acquiring, refunds, fiscal receipts, payouts, transactions.
Integrations: payment systems, OAuth, CRM, MoySklad, marketplaces and CMS.
Tech stack: PHP 8, Yii2, Laravel, Symfony, Python, Go, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Kafka, Debezium, REST API, OAuth 2.0, Docker, GitLab CI/CD, Nginx, Linux.

🤝 Personal qualities

Ownership: I take a task from idea to production without constant supervision.
Result-oriented: I finish with a working solution, not just "by the spec".
Business communication: I turn management goals into technical solutions.
Mentoring: I onboard new developers quickly.

Seenday ID: authentication out of the monolith

Problem

Authentication lived inside the monolith.

Solution

Designed and extracted the Seenday ID service, fully rewrote the auth code and database schema, added OAuth via T-Bank, MTS, Yandex, Google and VK.

Result

The service was extracted and launched in about a week; sign-in via 5 OAuth providers and email.

PHP 8 OAuth 2.0 PostgreSQL Microservices

Automated payouts to 900+ sellers

Problem

The CEO calculated seller payouts by hand and entered them into the bank and the database.

Solution

Built payout calculation and automatic creation of draft payments in the bank.

Result

Half a day to a full day of manual work saved on every payout cycle.

PHP Bank API Transactions MySQL

65,000-line legacy: PHP 5.6 → 8.2

Problem

An outdated PHP 5.6 project, changes were made directly on the production server.

Solution

Migrated ~65,000 lines to PHP 8.2, built a Docker environment, deployed self-hosted GitLab and split dev and prod environments.

Result

The project runs on modern PHP; by my estimate, separate environments prevented ~70% of failures.

PHP 8.2 Docker GitLab Refactoring

Александр обладает обширными знаниями в самых разных технологиях и умеет быстро применять их на практике, подбирая оптимальное решение под конкретную задачу.
Он отличается высокой стрессоустойчивостью: сохраняет спокойствие и продуктивность даже при сжатых сроках и большой нагрузке.
Отдельно хочу отметить его умение работать с задачами, у которых нет подробного описания. Александр самостоятельно разбирается в контексте, уточняет требования, предлагает варианты решения и доводит работу до результата.
Кроме того, Александр отлично работает в команде: открыт к обсуждению, охотно делится опытом и помогает коллегам. С ним легко и приятно взаимодействовать.
Рекомендую Александра как профессионала, на которого можно положиться в любой ситуации.

Nikita Skopitsev Frontend Engineer · colleague

Работал вместе с Александром, был в его подчинении. Обсуждали задачи, проходил ревью кода и получал отличную ОС от Саши. Был рад поработать вместе!

Matvey Devyatykh Backend Developer · reported to me

Очень круто было вместе работать, менторил меня с нуля опыта.

Ruslan Khamidullin Backend Developer PHP · reported to me

All recommendations on Setka (in Russian) →

Timeline Click a bar to expand that role

now

2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027

CRM, user dashboard and Seenday photo services marketplace: 900+ sellers, 10,000+ orders per month.

Responsibilities

Designing and building backend services: authentication, orders, payments, payouts, photo processing.
Breaking the monolith into services and syncing data between them.
Integrations with payment systems, OAuth providers and an online cash register.
Building tools in Python and Go: image processing, Telegram bots, a desktop app for photo exports.
Infrastructure (Linux, Docker, Nginx, Redis, Centrifugo, GitLab CI/CD) and team leadership: hiring, onboarding, code review.

Key results

Extracted the Seenday ID auth service from the monolith in ~1 week, fully rewrote the auth code and database schema.
Added OAuth sign-in via 5 providers (T-Bank, MTS, Yandex, Google, VK) plus email sign-in.
Built the full order lifecycle backend: pricing, payment, callbacks, statuses, partial and full refunds.
Integrated 4 payment systems (T-Bank, Belassist, Unicorn, WebKassa), issued fiscal receipts via WebKassa.
Ran money operations for orders and payouts inside transactions to keep data consistent.
Automated payouts to 900+ sellers: the system calculates amounts and creates draft payments in the bank — half a day to a day saved per cycle.
Set up data sync between services with Kafka and Debezium (CDC).
Built image processing services (thousands to tens of thousands of photos a day) and watermarks that avoid the face area.
Maintained a Go (Fyne) desktop app for photo exports: by export code it fetches a JSON schema via API and sorts photos into result folders and subfolders.
Completely redesigned the Go app interface.
Wrote Python scripts for image processing and Telegram bots.
Deployed self-hosted GitLab and CI/CD with auto-deploy to dev — ~1 hour a day saved.
Hired and onboarded 5 PHP developers: they started closing tasks on their own in ~3 days.

PHP 7.4/8.4 Python Go Fyne PostgreSQL MySQL MariaDB Redis Kafka Debezium Docker GitLab CI/CD Nginx Centrifugo OpenAPI Postman Linux

Project work: an SA-MP online game. Built in 2020–2021, then maintained and extended alongside other projects.

Responsibilities

Building and maintaining the web part: website, player dashboard, backend and frontend.
Game server logic in Pawn and Lua.
Supporting the project for 4+ years, hosting and domain setup.

Key results

Single-handedly built the whole web part: website, player dashboard and API for the game server.
Integrated payments via Robokassa and YooPay.
Built a VK bot in PHP to manage a game account right from the chat.

PHP MySQL JavaScript jQuery HTML5 CSS Pawn Lua VK API

Project work: a legacy PHP project.

Responsibilities

Developing backend and frontend of a legacy project (PHP, JavaScript, jQuery).
Modernising the codebase and decomposing the monolith.
Setting up the development process: environments, GitLab, code review.

Key results

Migrated a legacy project (~65,000 lines) from PHP 5.6 to PHP 8.2.
Introduced separate dev and production environments instead of editing on production — by my estimate, this prevented ~70% of failures.
Built a Docker environment, deployed self-hosted GitLab and moved the project to a new server.

PHP 5.6/8.2 JavaScript jQuery HTML5 CSS Docker GitLab