Senior Java backend Engineer

Roles & Responsibilities:

Backend Developer Profile

Core Tech Stack

Languages & Frameworks

• Java 11–25 (LTS focus: 11, 17, 21), modern language features (records, sealed classes, pattern matching, virtual threads)

• Spring Boot 3–4 (Spring Framework 6+, native compilation awareness a plus)

• Quarkus 1–2 (CDI, Panache, native image builds)

Data & Messaging

• PostgreSQL (schema design, indexing, query optimization, migrations via Liquibase/Flyway)

• Kafka (producers/consumers, partitioning strategy, exactly-once semantics, schema registry/Avro or Protobuf)

• Elasticsearch (indexing strategy, query DSL, aggregations)

• Redis (caching patterns, TTL strategy, pub/sub, distributed locks)

APIs & Integration

• REST (resource design, versioning, OpenAPI/contract-first)

• gRPC (protobuf contracts, streaming)

• GraphQL (schema design, resolver performance, N+1 avoidance)

Architecture

• Microservices (service boundaries, decoupling patterns, anti-corruption layers)

• Event-driven architecture (choreography vs. orchestration, eventual consistency, outbox pattern)

• 12-factor app principles as a baseline design discipline

Platform, Containers & Delivery

• Azure DevOps (pipelines as code, release management, boards)

• Docker (writing/reading Dockerfiles, image optimization)

• Kubernetes (pods, services, ConfigMaps/Secrets, HPA, resource limits)

• Helm charts and GitOps-based deployment (ArgoCD)

Testing & Quality Gates

• JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers

• Contract testing (Pact), static analysis (SonarQube/Checkstyle)

• Chaos/resilience testing awareness

Observability & Reliability

• Structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger)

• Metrics, dashboards, SLO/SLI-based alerting

• Resilience patterns: circuit breakers/bulkheads (Resilience4j), rate limiting

Security

• OWASP Top 10, secure coding practices

• Secrets management (Key Vault/External Secrets Operator)

• OAuth2/OIDC, service-to-service auth, dependency vulnerability scanning (Trivy/Snyk)

Modern Engineering Practices

• Effective, critical use of AI coding assistants (code generation, review, test/doc generation) without over-trusting output

Expectations:

• Designs service boundaries and evaluates microservice vs. modular monolith trade-offs for new capabilities

• Leads event-driven design decisions: schema evolution strategy, backward/forward compatibility, dead-letter handling, idempotency

• Makes and documents architecture decisions (ADRs) with awareness of long-term maintenance cost

• Owns performance: query optimization, caching strategy (Redis), connection pool tuning, JVM tuning basics

• Designs Helm charts and GitOps-based deployment pipelines (ArgoCD); understands HPA and resource planning at scale

• Drives quality gates: static analysis (SonarQube/Checkstyle), contract testing (Pact), mutation testing where appropriate; owns test pyramid strategy for the team

• Designs for observability from day one: sets SLOs/SLIs, structured logging, distributed tracing, cost-aware alerting — not bolted on after an incident

• Applies resilience patterns proactively (circuit breakers, bulkheads, rate limiting) rather than reactively after outages

• Understands security deeply: threat modeling, dependency vulnerability management, least-privilege service accounts, zero-trust service-to-service auth

• Comfortable operating across Spring Boot and Quarkus, and can make a reasoned recommendation for which fits a given service

• Can lead incident response: root cause analysis, blameless postmortems, follow-through on remediation

• Mentors medior/junior developers through pairing and code review, not just gatekeeping

• Evaluates where AI-assisted tooling (code review, test generation, documentation) genuinely improves team velocity vs. where it introduces risk

• Balances pragmatism vs. purism — knows when "clean" should yield to "shipped," and can defend that call

Quality mindset markers

• Treats clean architecture as a tool for change, not a religion — pushes back when it's used to over-engineer

• Actively reduces coupling across the ~100-service scale, not just within their own service

• Champions quality gates and test strategy for the team, not just their own PRs

Function: Design
Experience Level: Mid-Senior Level