How to Evaluate a Senior Backend Contractor With a Paid Pilot
Interviews show conversation. A paid pilot shows whether someone can work in your repository. Ten days is enough to see that, and too short to prove they should own the domain forever.
Senior backend engineer · PHP & Go · Europe
Senior backend engineering for PHP systems that outgrew their architecture
I help European product teams modernize legacy PHP systems and add senior backend capacity without opening another permanent role. I also run a separate private AI practice for workflows that need controlled infrastructure.
- €400/day embedded backend capacity
- €1200 fixed Migration Readiness Audit
- CET/CEST working-hours overlap
- EUR invoice monthly, one B2B agreement
How we can work together
Engineering engagements, not staffing products. You talk to the person doing the work from the first call.
Core backend work
Legacy PHP modernization & PHP → Go migration
I help engineering teams decide what should stay in PHP, what should be modernized, and what is worth extracting into Go. The audit comes before the code. The result is often: modernize this, extract only that.
- Migration Readiness Audit, €1200, fixed price
- PHP → Go implementation, from €550/day
- PHP modernization work, €400/day
- Fractional migration lead, from €550/day
See how the audit works
Senior backend engineer inside your team
Senior backend capacity without opening another payroll position. PHP, Go, APIs and distributed backend systems, working in your repository, your board and your review process.
- €400/day, up to 5 days per week
- 10-day paid pilot to start
- One B2B agreement, monthly EUR invoice
- CET/CEST overlap, English in writing and review
See how the engagement works
Separate practice
Position
Your PHP monolith does not necessarily need a rewrite
A rewrite is a decision with a multi-year cost, and it is the wrong default for most systems. I am paid to make the right architecture call, not the largest one.
01 · Measure
Find the actual constraint
Latency, throughput, database contention, deployment friction, or simply the cost of changing the code. Each of those has a different fix, and only some of them involve Go.
02 · Separate
Split the codebase by consequence
Most of a monolith is fine where it is. The interesting part is the handful of components whose load profile no longer matches the runtime they run on.
03 · Decide
Write the decision down
Keep, modernize, or extract, per component, with the reasoning, the risk and the sequencing. That document is what your team and your board can argue with.
What I work with
Backend only. No design, no frontend frameworks, no promises about parts of the system I do not touch.
Working stack
- PHP
- Symfony
- Laravel
- Go
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- Redis
- REST / gRPC APIs
- RabbitMQ
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD
Remote from Serbia, working hours overlapping CET/CEST. Engagements run on one B2B agreement with a monthly invoice in EUR.
How an engagement starts
01
Call
The first call is directly with the engineer doing the work.
02
Scope
A written scope: audit, implementation, or embedded capacity, with the price and what is out of scope.
03
Agreement
One B2B service agreement. NDA on request. Invoiced monthly in EUR, no intermediaries.
04
Start
Repository access, one real ticket, and a first pull request inside the first days of the engagement.
Blog
How I think about this work
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Next step
Tell me what the system is doing
Stack, the constraint you are hitting, and the deadline you are working against. If a rewrite is the wrong answer, you will hear that on the first call.