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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Java Spring Engineer

💰 $90,000 - $160,000

BackendJavaSpringMicroservicesCloudAPI Development

🎯 Role Definition

The Java Spring Engineer is a backend-focused software engineer responsible for designing, building, and maintaining scalable, secure Java-based applications using the Spring ecosystem. This role emphasizes microservices architecture, high-quality API development, performance tuning, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to deliver production-ready services that meet business and operational requirements. Ideal candidates combine deep Java and Spring expertise with strong engineering practices—testing, CI/CD, containerization—and cloud deployment experience.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Java Developer transitioning from academic or internship experience with Java and Spring.
  • Backend Developer with experience in REST APIs, databases, and one or more JVM languages.
  • Full-Stack Developer specializing in server-side Java components.

Advancement To:

  • Senior Java Engineer / Staff Engineer focusing on system design and technical leadership.
  • Tech Lead or Engineering Manager overseeing teams and delivery.
  • Solutions Architect or Principal Engineer owning architecture across domains.

Lateral Moves:

  • Full-Stack Engineer with added frontend responsibilities.
  • DevOps / SRE role specializing in deployment, monitoring, and reliability.
  • Cloud Platform Engineer focusing on scalable cloud-native services.

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Architect, design, and implement backend services using Java and the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data), ensuring modular, maintainable, and well-documented code that aligns with product requirements and company standards.
  • Build and maintain RESTful APIs and gRPC services with clear versioning, authentication/authorization, input validation, rate limiting, and meaningful error handling to support web and mobile clients.
  • Design and develop microservices that follow domain-driven design principles, boundaries, and contracts, enabling independent deployment and horizontal scalability across environments.
  • Implement persistence layers using JPA/Hibernate and Spring Data, optimizing queries, indexes, transactions, and caching strategies for performance and data consistency.
  • Create and maintain integration tests, unit tests, and contract tests using JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers, or equivalent frameworks to ensure high test coverage and reliable releases.
  • Drive CI/CD pipeline improvements (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) to automate builds, tests, static analysis, security scans, and artifact promotion to staging and production.
  • Containerize services using Docker and define orchestration and deployment strategies for Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS) including readiness/liveness probes, resource requests/limits, and sidecar patterns.
  • Implement and maintain secure coding practices: input sanitization, secure configuration, secrets management, encryption in transit and at rest, and regular dependency vulnerability remediation.
  • Collaborate with product managers and product owners to clarify requirements, scope MVPs, and decompose stories into deliverable tasks with clear acceptance criteria.
  • Participate in architecture and design reviews, contribute to technology roadmaps, and evaluate trade-offs such as database selection, messaging, and synchronous vs. asynchronous designs.
  • Integrate with messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SNS/SQS) to build event-driven or asynchronous workflows ensuring exactly-once or at-least-once semantics where appropriate.
  • Implement observability by adding structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger), and metrics (Prometheus, Grafana) to support monitoring, alerting, and on-call troubleshooting.
  • Optimize service performance by profiling, conducting load testing, tuning JVM settings, and addressing hot spots in code, GC, or I/O to meet SLA and latency targets.
  • Lead and conduct code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and establish best practices for code quality, readability, and maintainability across the team.
  • Design and enforce API contracts and schema evolution strategies, including backward/forward compatibility testing and clear deprecation policies.
  • Manage database migrations safely (Flyway, Liquibase) and coordinate schema changes across multiple environments with rollback plans.
  • Define and implement feature toggles and release strategies (blue/green, canary) to reduce risk during production rollouts and enable fast, reversible releases.
  • Troubleshoot production incidents, perform root cause analysis, produce postmortem documentation, and implement preventative measures to reduce recurrence.
  • Collaborate with security, compliance, and ops teams to meet regulatory and internal audit requirements, ensuring secure deployment and data handling practices.
  • Contribute to developer experience by creating reusable libraries, starter templates, and documentation that accelerate team onboarding and consistent service patterns.
  • Evaluate third-party libraries, frameworks, and cloud services to accelerate development while managing technical debt and long-term maintenance implications.
  • Participate actively in sprint planning, grooming, and estimation to help the product team deliver consistent business value and meet release timelines.

Secondary Functions

  • Support cross-team integrations by developing SDKs, client libraries, and clear API usage documentation for internal and external consumers.
  • Assist in capacity planning and cost optimization for cloud resources used by Java services.
  • Provide on-call support rotation for incident response and collaborate with SRE/DevOps to improve runbook quality and automation.
  • Conduct knowledge-sharing sessions, lunch-and-learns, and brown-bag talks to spread best practices in Java and Spring across engineering teams.
  • Contribute to the hiring process by screening candidates, writing technical interview questions, and participating in onsite interviews.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Java (Java 8+) — deep understanding of language features, concurrency, memory model, and performance tuning.
  • Spring Framework — extensive experience with Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data, Spring Security, and Spring Cloud components.
  • RESTful API design and implementation, including API versioning, HATEOAS basics, and OpenAPI/Swagger documentation.
  • Microservices architecture patterns, domain-driven design, and service decomposition strategies.
  • Persistence technologies — JPA/Hibernate, SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis) with schema design and optimization.
  • Messaging and event-driven systems — Kafka, RabbitMQ, or cloud-native messaging services; understanding of partitioning and consumer groups.
  • Containerization and orchestration — Docker, Kubernetes, Helm; knowledge of manifests, operators, and deployment strategies.
  • CI/CD tooling — Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or equivalent; familiarity with pipeline as code and automated artifact promotion.
  • Observability — structured logging (ELK/EFK), distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger), monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana), and alerting.
  • Testing frameworks — JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers, and strategies for unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end tests.
  • Build and dependency management — Maven or Gradle; dependency version management and repository management.
  • Cloud platforms — AWS, GCP, or Azure services for compute, storage, messaging, and managed databases.
  • Security best practices — OAuth2/OpenID Connect, JWT, encryption, secrets management, and secure dependency management.
  • Version control — Git workflows, branching strategies, and pull request best practices.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication skills for collaborating with product, QA, and operations teams; able to explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
  • Problem-solving mindset with a focus on delivering pragmatic, maintainable solutions under time constraints.
  • Ownership and accountability for the services you build, including reliable operation and lifecycle management.
  • Mentoring and leadership: ability to coach junior engineers and lead design discussions.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning to adopt new frameworks, tools, and industry best practices.
  • Attention to detail with a mindset toward high-quality code, documentation, and user-facing reliability.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to balance feature delivery, technical debt, and operational tasks.
  • Collaborative and team-focused approach; ability to work in cross-functional agile teams.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent professional certifications and demonstrable experience.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Applied Mathematics / Data Structures & Algorithms

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3 - 7 years of professional software development experience, with at least 2+ years focused on Java backend systems and Spring Boot.

Preferred: 5+ years building production Java microservices, experience architecting distributed systems, and proven track record delivering services at scale in cloud environments.

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