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.