Full-Stack Senior Engineer for Panda Ride - 04/10/2026 13:31 EDT

Engineer (Flutter + Laravel API) SENIOR FULL-STACK ENGINEER (FULTTER + LARAVEL API
— Panda Ride

Location: Remote
Type: Full-time / long-term contract
Reports to: Technical Management

About Panda Ride
Panda Ride is a ride-hailing platform built to compete directly with Uber, Bolt and Lyft. The platform is already live: a rider app, a driver app, an admin/dispatch panel, a public website and a realtime
backend running in production.
The foundation is in place — Firebase has been removed from the core, realtime runs on our own
Socket.IO gateway, deployments are automated, and the code is documented. What's left is the hard last mile: making the live ride experience feel as smooth and reliable as the incumbents, finishing the apps, and getting the platform ready for real scale.
We're hiring one strong engineer to own that and take the product to a complete, launch-ready state.

The stack you'll work in

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:

Mobile: {Two Flutter apps (Rider + Driver) — BLoC, Dio, get_it, socket_io_client , Google Maps /
flutter_map, background location service, FCM push}

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Backend: { Laravel 10 (PHP 8.2), Sanctum auth, queues and scheduler, Redis, MySQL 8.4 with
data (PostgreSQL/PostGIS migration planned)

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Admin &
web: {Laravel + Inertia.js + Vue 3 (admin, dispatch, booking, CMS, public website)}

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Realtime; { Laravel broadcast events → Redis pub/sub → Node.js Socket.IO gateway
scalable) → mobile clients}

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Maps &
routing: { Google Maps / Directions API, navigation and ETA logic, route progress, rerouting}

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Payments: {Stripe / Stripe Connect (rider payments and driver payouts)

AREA: TECHNOLOGY:
Infra: { Docker Compose, nginx edge, GitHub Actions → GHCR → VPS, automated test gate

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

1. Make the live ride experience production-quality
Deliver smooth, Google-Maps-like driver marker movement on the rider app (interpolation, bearing,
update cadence).
Fix and verify ETA display and accuracy on both rider and driver sides.
Finish traffic-aware rerouting (switching to a faster route when traffic degrades).
Make rides survive real-world conditions: app backgrounded, process killed, network lost and
recovered — the trip must resume correctly.
Run and document real on-the-road qualification rides with physical devices and close the open
items in our ride-experience tracker.
2. Finish and polish both Flutter apps
Review and fix the main journey screens across both apps (~300 screens total): layout, empty/error
states, spacing, copy, and correct regional details (currency, units, date/time and phone formats).
Complete driver onboarding (vehicle makes/models, documents, approval flow).
Improve battery and network behaviour of the driver app's background location tracking.
Prepare and ship releases to Google Play and the App Store.
3. Backend, realtime and payments
Own the Laravel API (the single canonical V1 API used by both apps), matching/dispatch and the
ride lifecycle.
Move the web booking and dispatch screens fully onto realtime (Socket.IO) instead of polling.
Harden Stripe payments and Stripe Connect driver payouts behind the existing approval and
idempotency flow.
Keep the realtime layer correct and secure: authorised rooms, guaranteed delivery of state
changes, and convergence after missed events.
4. Scale and operations
Load-test the stack at realistic concurrency and report what saturates first — replace estimates with
measurements.
Improve monitoring, alerting, backups and rollback so problems are visible before riders notice
them.
Contribute to later infrastructure decisions (managed MySQL/Redis, PostgreSQL migration, cloud
hosting).

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR:

Must have
5+ years of professional software engineering, with at least 3 years of production Flutter apps
shipped to both Play Store and App Store.
Strong Flutter fundamentals: BLoC (or similar), app lifecycle, background services, isolates,
platform channels, and performance tuning.

Hands-on experience with maps and live location: Google Maps SDK, GPS tracking, marker
animation, polylines, geolocation accuracy and battery trade-offs.
Realtime systems experience: WebSockets / Socket.IO, reconnection, event ordering, and state
recovery on unreliable mobile networks.
3+ years of production Laravel (PHP 8.x): building REST APIs, Sanctum authentication,
Eloquent, migrations, queues/jobs, scheduler, events and broadcasting, with Redis and MySQL.
Comfortable with Docker, Linux servers, CI/CD (GitHub Actions) and working safely with a live
production system.
You read existing code and documentation carefully before changing it, and you verify your work
with tests and real-device evidence — not just "it builds".
Clear written English; you document decisions and hand off cleanly.
Nice to have
Built or worked on a ride-hailing, delivery or logistics app (Uber/Bolt-style flows, dispatch, ETA).
Stripe / Stripe Connect payments and marketplace payouts.
Node.js/TypeScript (for the Socket.IO gateway).
Vue 3 / Inertia.js for the admin panel.
Load testing (k6, Artillery, Locust) and observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, Sentry).
PostgreSQL / PostGIS.
Native Android (Kotlin) or iOS (Swift) experience for platform-specific issues like background
location.