Founded in 2016, Japan Awaits is a fast-growing inbound travel company that designs and delivers custom tours, cultural experiences, and unique itineraries for international visitors. Our mission is to showcase Japan’s culture and hospitality through expert guides, trusted partners, and thoughtfully crafted travel products.

You will play a key role in designing, developing, and scaling Japan Awaits’ core internal systems and partner platforms.

You will contribute to both hands-on development and technical decision-making, while mentoring junior developers and improving engineering standards.

You will:

• Design and develop scalable Laravel-based applications and APIs
• Architect and implement workflow-driven business systems (Booking lifecycle, quotation automation, role-based permissions, notification systems)
• Lead third-party integration projects (Payment gateways, OTA partners, internal automation tools)
• Optimize system performance, database design, and scalability
• Mentor junior and mid-level developers
• Improve deployment pipelines, monitoring, and system reliability

Collaborate with product, UX, and operations teams to translate business processes into technical solutions

• PHP 8 & Laravel 12
• Javascript, React & React-Native
• MySQL 
• GitHub
• Ubuntu / DigitalOcean infrastructure
• REST APIs

• Work in an international and fast-scaling product environment
• Lead the development of mission-critical business systems
• Influence architecture and technology decisions
• Opportunity to mentor and grow technical leadership skills
• Fully remote and flexible working culture

• 4+ years experience working with PHP
• Strong experience with Laravel framework
• Strong understanding of OOP and design patterns
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs
• Strong experience in database architecture and performance optimization
• Experience working with Redis or caching systems
• Strong Git workflow experience
• Experience working with Linux server environments

• Experience building ERP, CRM, or workflow-driven platforms
• Experience with Agility/SCRUM team
• Experience on creating mobile & web app 
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Experience mentoring developers or leading technical projects

• Location: Fully Remote
• Working Hours: 8 hours/day (11 AM – 7 PM), 6 days/week with flexible Saturdays. Saturday tasks are remote-friendly and focus strictly on urgent support