Torchora
Back to Home

Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Java Application Engineer

💰 $ - $

Software EngineeringBackendJava

🎯 Role Definition

The Java Application Engineer is responsible for designing, developing, testing and maintaining enterprise-grade Java applications and microservices. This role partners with product management, QA, DevOps and architecture teams to deliver scalable and resilient backend systems that meet business requirements and operational SLAs. The ideal candidate brings deep Java/JVM expertise, hands-on experience with Spring Boot and microservices, strong API design and cloud deployment skills, and a record of delivering production-grade software in an Agile environment.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Java Developer / Software Engineer (0–3 years)
  • Backend Developer with experience in Java or Kotlin
  • Full Stack Developer transitioning to backend-focused roles

Advancement To:

  • Senior Java Engineer / Senior Backend Engineer
  • Lead/Principal Software Engineer
  • Engineering Manager / Technical Architect
  • Solutions Architect / System Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • Cloud Engineer (AWS/GCP/Azure)
  • Full Stack Engineer
  • Data Engineering (backend-focused roles)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Architect, design and implement new backend services and RESTful APIs in Java using Spring Boot, Spring Cloud and related frameworks, ensuring clean, maintainable and testable code that meets product requirements.
  • Build high-throughput, low-latency microservices that scale horizontally, implement fault-tolerance patterns (circuit breakers, retries, bulkheads) and meet availability and performance SLAs.
  • Lead the end-to-end development lifecycle for assigned features — from requirements analysis and technical design to implementation, testing, deployment and post-release support — while collaborating closely with product owners and cross-functional teams.
  • Write comprehensive unit and integration tests (JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers) and practice Test-Driven Development (TDD) to ensure code quality and reduce regressions in production.
  • Design and implement data persistence layers using relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL stores (MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis), including schema design, indexing strategies and query optimization.
  • Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) to automate build, test and deployment workflows, and ensure reproducible and auditable releases to staging and production environments.
  • Containerize applications using Docker and define Kubernetes manifests/Helm charts to deploy and manage microservices in container orchestration platforms (EKS, GKE, AKS or self-managed K8s).
  • Implement robust API versioning, backward compatibility and documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger) to provide clear, discoverable endpoints for internal and external consumers.
  • Perform JVM tuning and profiling (JVM flags, garbage collector tuning, flight recorder, VisualVM, JFR) to diagnose memory leaks, CPU hotspots and optimize runtime performance under production load.
  • Collaborate with SRE/DevOps teams to define and implement monitoring, logging and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK) and create actionable runbooks for incidents and on-call support.
  • Enforce secure coding practices and integrate security controls (OAuth2, JWT, TLS, input validation) to protect data and services against OWASP top vulnerabilities and ensure compliance requirements.
  • Conduct design and code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and evangelize engineering best practices including SOLID principles, modularization and API-first design.
  • Decompose large features into iterative, incremental deliverables and estimate technical effort, risk and dependencies for sprint planning and roadmap commitments.
  • Integrate third-party services and SDKs, manage API contracts and ensure robust error handling and retry semantics for external communications.
  • Implement asynchronous processing patterns (message queues, event-driven architecture, Kafka, RabbitMQ) for decoupled, resilient workflows and near-real-time data processing.
  • Maintain backward and forward compatibility for services in multi-version environments, and orchestrate safe migrations or data model changes with minimal downtime.
  • Drive performance regression testing, load testing (JMeter, Gatling) and capacity planning to identify bottlenecks and validate scaling behavior under expected traffic patterns.
  • Maintain high-quality CI/CD artifacts: Docker images, build artifacts, release notes and deployment scripts while adhering to immutable infrastructure principles.
  • Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis and implement long-term fixes and preventative measures; participate in on-call rotations as required.
  • Contribute to technical roadmap and architecture decisions by providing data-driven trade-offs, proof-of-concepts and technical feasibility assessments.
  • Stay current with Java ecosystem changes (new Java versions, JVM improvements, library upgrades) and proactively propose improvements to reduce technical debt and improve developer productivity.
  • Drive observability enhancements: trace distributed requests (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger), correlate logs and metrics and implement SLOs/SLIs to quantify service reliability.
  • Champion accessibility, localization and internationalization considerations for backend services that support global user bases.
  • Participate in hiring, interviewing and onboarding new engineers; create and update technical documentation, runbooks and API guides to ensure knowledge continuity.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis by collaborating with data teams and exposing data via secure APIs or data feeds.
  • Contribute to the organization's technical strategy and roadmap, offering recommendations on Java ecosystem adoption, microservices governance and cloud-native architecture.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate product requirements into engineering tasks, acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes.
  • Participate actively in sprint planning, retrospectives and other Agile ceremonies; help the team continuously improve delivery cadence and quality.
  • Assist in cross-team integrations, manage dependencies and coordinate release windows to minimize customer impact.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert-level Java programming (Java 8+), strong understanding of the JVM, classloading, memory model and concurrency primitives.
  • Hands-on experience with Spring ecosystem: Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data, Spring Security and Spring Cloud for microservices.
  • Proven experience designing and building RESTful APIs (OpenAPI/Swagger), API versioning and contract-driven development.
  • Strong knowledge of microservices architecture patterns, service discovery, API gateway patterns and distributed tracing.
  • Experience with containerization and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes and Helm charts; familiarity with managing services on EKS/GKE/AKS.
  • Proficient with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Redis), including schema design and query optimization.
  • Familiarity with messaging/event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and asynchronous processing models.
  • Solid skills in CI/CD tooling: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and build tools: Maven, Gradle.
  • Practical experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP or Azure): deployment, IAM, managed services (RDS, ECS/EKS, Cloud SQL) and cost-aware design.
  • Logging, monitoring and observability expertise: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, Jaeger/OpenTelemetry and alerting best practices.
  • Competent in unit/integration testing frameworks: JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers and end-to-end testing strategies.
  • Knowledge of secure coding practices, authentication/authorization standards (OAuth2, JWT), encryption and secrets management.
  • Familiarity with performance tuning, profiling tools and techniques to optimize CPU, memory and GC behavior on the JVM.
  • Source control and collaborative development: Git workflows, branching strategies, pull request hygiene and code review tooling.
  • Experience with feature flags, blue/green and canary deployments to enable safe rollouts and A/B testing.
  • Understanding of software architecture principles (DDD, CQRS, hexagonal architecture) and their application in large codebases.
  • Exposure to serverless paradigms (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions) is a plus for event-driven or bursty workloads.
  • Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation) and automation practices for reproducible deployments.
  • Ability to write clear, maintainable technical documentation, API specs and runbooks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication skills: articulate technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders clearly and persuasively.
  • Problem-solving mindset with a customer-first orientation and ability to balance short-term fixes vs. long-term scalable solutions.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: experience working in cross-functional Agile teams and mentoring junior engineers.
  • Ownership and accountability: proactive in owning features end-to-end and driving issues to resolution.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: eagerness to adopt new technologies and iterate on processes based on feedback.
  • Time management and organizational skills: prioritize work effectively in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities.
  • Attention to detail and commitment to quality, testing and maintainable systems.
  • Facilitation and leadership capability: run design sessions, technical demos and contribute to hiring decisions.
  • Analytical thinking and data-driven decision making: use metrics, logs and telemetry to guide improvements.
  • Empathy and user-focus: consider the operational and user impact of design and implementation choices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems or a related technical field; or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related discipline; relevant technical certifications in cloud or architecture are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Applied Mathematics or related quantitative fields

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years building backend systems in Java for production environments.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of professional Java development experience with demonstrable ownership of services in production.
  • Experience delivering services in cloud-native environments and working within distributed systems at scale.
  • Prior exposure to Agile/Scrum teams, mentorship responsibilities and participation in on-call rotations.
Explore More Careers