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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Java Developer

💰 $ - $

EngineeringSoftware DevelopmentJava

🎯 Role Definition

We are looking for a pragmatic, detail-oriented Java Developer to design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in modern Java (8/11/17+), Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud), microservices design, containerization, and cloud-native deployment patterns. This role requires a balance of hands-on coding, system design, code quality ownership, and close collaboration with product, QA, and operations teams to deliver resilient, secure, and performant distributed systems.

Key keywords for searchability: Java Developer, Spring Boot, microservices, REST API, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, JUnit, performance tuning, Hibernate, SQL, Kafka.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Java Developer / Graduate Software Engineer
  • Backend Developer (Node/Python to Java transition)
  • Software Engineer I — API or Platform focus

Advancement To:

  • Senior Java Developer / Senior Backend Engineer
  • Technical Lead / Team Lead (Backend)
  • Solutions Architect / Software Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • Full-Stack Developer (Java + JavaScript frameworks)
  • DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer (focus on CI/CD & cloud infra)
  • Data Engineer (if transitioning into streaming/data pipelines)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, implement, and maintain secure, scalable Java-based backend services using Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, delivering well-documented RESTful and/or gRPC APIs that meet functional and non-functional requirements.
  • Architect and develop microservices with a focus on modularity, fault tolerance, observability and clear service contracts; lead decomposition or refactoring of monolithic systems into cloud-native services where required.
  • Own the full development lifecycle for assigned features: requirements analysis, technical design, implementation, unit and integration testing, CI/CD pipeline configuration, and deployment to staging/production.
  • Build and maintain automated unit, integration, and end-to-end tests using JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers and other testing frameworks to ensure high code quality and regression protection.
  • Implement robust data access layers using Hibernate/JPA and SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and optimize queries, transactions and ORM mappings for performance and scalability.
  • Develop and integrate with asynchronous/event-driven architectures using Kafka, RabbitMQ, or other messaging systems to support decoupled, resilient workflows and stream-processing use cases.
  • Design and execute performance profiling, memory and GC analysis, and tuning activities to diagnose and resolve latency, throughput or resource consumption issues in production and pre-production environments.
  • Implement authentication and authorization flows (OAuth2, JWT, OpenID Connect) and collaborate with security teams to remediate vulnerabilities, follow OWASP best practices, and ensure compliance with data protection requirements.
  • Build CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) and automated deployment strategies including blue/green or canary releases; collaborate with platform/DevOps teams to automate rollout, rollback and recovery.
  • Containerize applications with Docker and manage orchestration/deployment on Kubernetes (EKS/GKE/AKS) or other container platforms; author Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and operator patterns.
  • Participate in code reviews and architecture reviews promoting coding standards, design patterns, and maintainable, testable code; mentor junior engineers and influence technical direction.
  • Implement observability: structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger), metrics (Prometheus), and dashboards/alerts (Grafana/ELK) to enable SRE and on-call teams to monitor service health and SLAs.
  • Collaborate closely with product owners, business analysts and QA to translate business requirements into technical tasks, estimate effort, define acceptance criteria and deliver on sprint commitments.
  • Troubleshoot and debug production incidents, lead post-incident reviews (postmortems), document root causes and remedial actions, and implement preventative improvements to reduce incident recurrence.
  • Develop migration and upgrade strategies for JDK, framework and dependency updates, ensuring backward compatibility and phased rollout plans to minimize disruption.
  • Integrate backend systems with third-party APIs and partner platforms, handling API versioning, throttling, retries and error handling in a resilient manner.
  • Maintain and enhance legacy Java codebases by applying refactoring techniques, improving test coverage, and reducing technical debt while preserving business continuity.
  • Define and enforce API contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger), client SDK generation and backward compatible evolutions; ensure proper API governance across teams.
  • Drive platform-level improvements such as observability frameworks, shared libraries, CI/CD templates, and secure base images to improve developer productivity across the engineering organization.
  • Lead proof-of-concept (POC) evaluations for new technologies, frameworks or cloud services, producing feasibility reports and cost/benefit analyses to inform roadmap decisions.
  • Ensure configuration, secrets, and sensitive data are managed securely (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager) and follow environment parity practices across dev/staging/prod.
  • Collaborate with QA and automation engineers to build reliable test harnesses, performance test plans, and continuous testing workflows to detect regressions earlier in the pipeline.
  • Participate in Agile ceremonies: sprint planning, backlog refinement, demos and retrospectives; contribute to continuous improvement of team processes and delivery predictability.
  • Create and maintain accurate technical documentation, runbooks, and onboarding guides to reduce time-to-productivity for new team members and cross-team collaborators.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in estimating effort and identifying risks for cross-team integration initiatives.
  • Engage in customer- or partner-facing technical discussions when escalations or clarifications are required.
  • Provide training sessions, brown-bags or internal workshops to upskill peers on Java best practices, testing strategy and cloud-native development patterns.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert knowledge of Java (8, 11, 17+) with strong understanding of the JVM, classloading, memory model and garbage collection tuning.
  • Hands-on experience with Spring Framework, especially Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Security, and Spring Data.
  • Proven experience designing and implementing microservices architectures, inter-service communication patterns, and related trade-offs.
  • Experience building and documenting RESTful APIs (OpenAPI/Swagger) and/or gRPC services with emphasis on versioning and backward compatibility.
  • Proficient with SQL and relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and familiarity with NoSQL solutions (MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis) for specific use cases.
  • Messaging and streaming technologies such as Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS; knowledge of exactly-once/at-least-once semantics.
  • Build tools and dependency management: Maven and/or Gradle; artifact repositories (Nexus, Artifactory).
  • Source control and branching strategies: Git (GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket) and trunk-based or GitFlow workflows.
  • Containerization (Docker) and orchestration on Kubernetes; practical experience creating Helm charts and managing deployments.
  • CI/CD pipelines and automation (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) including pipeline-as-code and automated release gating.
  • Test automation: JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers, integration testing frameworks and experience with code coverage metrics.
  • Cloud platform experience: AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, RDS, S3), Azure or GCP; familiarity with IaC tools (Terraform, CloudFormation).
  • Observability: structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), metrics collection (Prometheus), dashboards and alerting (Grafana, ELK).
  • Performance profiling and optimization tools: Java Flight Recorder, VisualVM, YourKit, or equivalent.
  • Security best practices: OWASP, input validation, secure authentication/authorization patterns, secrets management.
  • Familiarity with software architecture concepts: design patterns, domain-driven design, CAP theorem and eventual consistency.
  • Static analysis and code quality tools: SonarQube, Checkstyle, SpotBugs; familiarity with dependency scanning and SCA tools.
  • Experience with API gateways, rate-limiting and service mesh patterns (Istio, Linkerd) is a plus.

Soft Skills

  • Strong written and verbal communication—able to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
  • Collaborative team player who can work cross-functionally with product, QA, and operations.
  • Problem-solving orientation with a bias for root-cause analysis and permanent fixes rather than quick patches.
  • Mentorship and knowledge-sharing mindset to uplift junior engineers and promote best practices.
  • Ownership and accountability for end-to-end delivery and production stability.
  • Time management and prioritization in fast-paced, iterative delivery environments.
  • Adaptability and eagerness to learn new frameworks, cloud services and engineering practices.
  • Customer-focused attitude and ability to translate business needs into technical solutions.
  • Strong attention to detail with a pragmatic approach to balancing quality, time-to-market and technical debt.
  • Conflict resolution and stakeholder management during technical trade-offs and roadmap decisions.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline, or relevant professional certifications (Oracle Java Certification, AWS Certified Developer/Architect).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Computer Engineering
  • Applied Mathematics (with software development experience)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3 to 7 years of professional experience developing backend systems in Java (adjustable by seniority; junior roles may be 1–3 years, senior roles 6+ years).

Preferred:

  • 5+ years building production-grade Java services, experience with cloud-native architectures, microservices, and at least one public cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP).
  • Demonstrated ownership of end-to-end delivery, production support experience, and contributions to platform or architectural improvements.
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