Senior Backend Engineer (Java)

Senior Backend Engineer (Java)

• Location: Manchester, UK (Hybrid - 2 days/week on-site)
• Role Type: Contract

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and scale resilient, high-performance distributed systems. This role is ideal for a pragmatic developer who thrives in fast-paced Agile environments, excels at navigating large existing codebases, and delivers production-ready software with minimal supervision.

In this role, you will lead complex technical initiatives, influence system architecture, and leverage modern AI tooling (Claude and Codex) to accelerate delivery. You'll work cross-functionally with product managers, frontend engineers, and platform teams while elevating code quality and mentoring fellow engineers.

Core Responsibilities

• Architecture & API Design: Build and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant backend microservices and REST APIs.
• Technical Leadership: Lead medium-to-large engineering initiatives, participate in design reviews, and establish engineering best practices.
• System Operations & Reliability: Troubleshoot complex production issues, conduct root-cause analysis, and enhance observability, logging, and performance.
• Delivery & Quality: Write clean, testable Java code, conduct constructive code reviews, and drive automated testing (unit, integration, and E2E).
• DevOps & Collaboration: Partner with infrastructure teams to optimize CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and containerized deployments.

What You'll Bring (Must-Haves)

• Experience: 5+ years of hands-on backend engineering experience, with deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot.
• Distributed Systems: proven track record in microservices architecture, relational database modeling, and event-driven messaging (e.g., Kafka).
• Cloud & DevOps: Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerization, and modern CI/CD pipelines.
• Engineering Standards: Mastery in API design, resiliency patterns, production troubleshooting, and full-stack testing strategies.
• Modern Tooling: Expertise in utilizing AI-assisted development tools like Claude and Codex to drive productivity.
• Soft Skills: Clear communication, strong risk estimation, and a track record of driving technical solutions independently.

Nice-to-Haves

• Cloud platform experience with AWS or GCP.
• Experience with GraphQL and JVM performance tuning.
• Knowledge of SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, and high-scale consumer platforms.
• Experience with A/B testing frameworks or cross-team technical leadership.