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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Java Backend Developer

💰 $75,000 - $130,000

TechnologySoftware DevelopmentBackend DevelopmentJavaAPI DevelopmentMicroservices

🎯 Role Definition

The Java Backend Developer is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the server-side components of high-performance applications using Java and related frameworks. This role involves developing RESTful APIs, managing databases, implementing business logic, ensuring scalability, security, and reliability, and collaborating closely with frontend developers, product managers, and DevOps teams. The developer will also participate in system architecture decisions, optimize backend performance, and adhere to best practices in coding, testing, and deployment to support the organization’s technical and business objectives.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Software Engineer (Backend) with Java
  • Full‑stack Developer transitioning to backend focus
  • Systems Developer experienced in server‑side Java

Advancement To:

  • Senior Java Backend Developer / Technical Lead – Backend
  • Lead Backend Architect / Microservices Platform Lead
  • Director of Backend Engineering / Head of Platform Services

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps/Cloud Engineer specialising in backend infrastructure
  • Data Engineering Lead focusing on Java data‑pipeline services
  • API Platform Architect – backend services and integrations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  1. Design, develop and maintain robust Java‑based backend services and APIs, ensuring high performance, scalability and resilience.
  2. Collaborate with product managers, architects, frontend developers and QA teams to analyse requirements, define technical specifications and deliver backend solutions aligned with business goals.
  3. Develop RESTful or event‑driven APIs, service endpoints and integrations for internal and external applications, enabling seamless communication across systems.
  4. Design and optimise database schemas, queries and data models (SQL and/or NoSQL) to support backend services, ensure data integrity and performant access.
  5. Implement backend logic including business rules, workflows, data processing, job scheduling, asynchronous tasks and multithreaded operations.
  6. Ensure code quality and maintainability: conduct code reviews, enforce coding standards, manage technical debt, refactor legacy services and promote best practices.
  7. Implement secure coding practices: authentication/authorization, encryption, data protection, secure APIs and adherence to compliance or regulatory requirements.
  8. Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines, automated build, test and deployment workflows, version control (e.g., Git) and environment promotion for backend services.
  9. Deploy and manage backend services in cloud or hybrid environments, using containerisation (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), microservices and serverless platforms where applicable.
  10. Monitor, log and analyse production backend performance, reliability, throughput, latency and error‑rates; implement appropriate alerts, dashboards and root‑cause investigations.
  11. Troubleshoot and resolve production incidents, system failures or degraded performance; perform post‑mortems and drive continuous improvement to avoid recurrence.
  12. Optimise backend systems for high transaction volumes and low latency; apply performance tuning, caching strategies, asynchronous processing and concurrency control.
  13. Work with frontend and integration teams to ensure smooth interaction between UI, backend services and underlying data, resolve dependencies and coordinate releases.
  14. Participate in architecture and design sessions; contribute to service‑oriented architecture (SOA), microservices, domain‑driven design (DDD), service decomposition and API strategy.
  15. Document system architecture, API specifications, data flows, deployment processes, run‑books and operational procedures to support knowledge sharing and maintainability.
  16. Mentor and coach other developers, share knowledge on Java frameworks, backend patterns, system optimisation and contribute to team growth and excellence.
  17. Keep up‑to‑date with emerging technologies, backend frameworks, cloud services and industry trends, evaluate and propose improvements to maintain competitive edge.
  18. Estimate tasks, contribute to sprint planning, design backlog items, participate in agile ceremonies and help manage delivery risk and dependencies.
  19. Collaborate with DevOps, infrastructure and SRE teams to ensure backend services are highly available, resilient, scalable and cost‑efficient.
  20. Align backend engineering efforts with business outcomes: deliver services that enable users to meet requirements, exceed expectations and support strategic goals.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad‑hoc data requests and exploratory backend analytics or logs to identify usage patterns or optimize service performance.
  • Contribute to the organisation’s data‑engineering roadmap for backend services, infrastructure and APIs.
  • Collaborate with business units, product managers and operations to translate backend service needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning, stand‑ups, retrospectives, and other agile ceremonies within the backend development team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficiency in Java (Java 8/11/17) and object‑oriented programming, data structures, algorithms.
  • Extensive experience with backend frameworks such as Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Hibernate, JPA.
  • Strong experience building and consuming RESTful APIs, web services (SOAP/REST) and event‑driven/messaging systems (Kafka, JMS).
  • Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra) and writing high‑performance queries.
  • Familiarity with microservices architecture, containerisation (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Experience with CI/CD tooling, build automation (Maven/Gradle), version control (Git), unit/integration testing frameworks (JUnit, Mockito).
  • Proficiency in performance optimisation, concurrency, multithreading, caching, and scalability patterns for high‑volume backend services.
  • Solid understanding of secure coding practices, authentication/authorization (OAuth2, JWT), encryption and data protection.
  • Ability to write clear technical documentation: architecture diagrams, API contracts, deployment guides, run‑books.
  • Experience working in agile teams, sprint planning, backlog management, peer code reviews and mentoring junior developers.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent communication: articulate technical details effectively to stakeholders, cross‑functional teams and non‑technical audiences.
  • Analytical problem‑solver: break down complex backend challenges, identify root‑causes and implement robust solutions under pressure.
  • Ownership and accountability: take full responsibility for backend service quality, delivery outcomes, reliability and performance.
  • Team‑player and mentor: collaborate with other developers, share knowledge, conduct code reviews and foster a culture of learning and improvement.
  • Adaptability and continuous‑learning: embrace new technologies, frameworks and evolving business or technical requirements.
  • Time‑management and prioritisation: manage multiple tasks, features, bug‑fixes and infrastructure improvements in a fast‑paced environment.
  • Strategic mindset: align backend engineering efforts with business strategy, drive technical roadmap decisions and highlight risks/debt proactively.
  • User‑focus: ensure backend services deliver value to clients, operations, users and align with product/market expectations.
  • Quality‑driven: maintain high standards of code quality, testing, reliability and maintainability rather than sacrificing for speed.
  • Detail‑oriented: monitor performance metrics, concurrency behaviours, resource usage and ensure stable production systems over time.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or equivalent professional experience.
Preferred Education:
Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related discipline is a plus.
Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Data Systems / Distributed Computing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:
3 – 7 years of experience in backend software development with Java and related technologies.
Preferred:
Proven track‑record in designing and delivering scalable, high‑performance Java backend systems, working with microservices, cloud platforms, and mentoring other developers.

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