Backend Java Developer - Birmingham • Hybrid • £50–65k • Not London

Backend Java DeveloperLocation: Birmingham (Hybrid)

Employment: Fixed Term Contract

Salary: £50,000 – £65,000 base (dependent on experience)

If your idea of backend engineering is more than CRUD APIs and microservices boilerplate — this role is for you.

We’re building the core backend services of a Data Fabric platform that governs data access, entitlements, and query policy enforcement across distributed enterprise data systems.

This is platform engineering: deterministic rule engines, SQL planning/interception, and high-throughput services that sit on the critical path of data access.

This is deep backend + data infrastructure work.

🚀 What You’ll Do

• Build core backend services in Java (17/21) for access control and query manipulation

• Implement deterministic policy / rule engines for data governance

• Work on SQL parsing, planning, validation, and transformation (e.g., Calcite or similar planners)

• Integrate with distributed data platforms / query engines (e.g., Starburst or similar)

• Own API contracts with living documentation in CI/CD

• Build production-grade, testable pipelines

• Drive observability, reliability, and performance

• Contribute to architecture decisions (modularity, DI, extensibility)

What You Bring (Must-Have)

• Strong hands-on experience in Java (17/21) + Spring

• Deep understanding of JDBC, SQL parsing/validation, query planning/optimization

• Experience with SQL planners or query transformation layers

• Strong grounding in data structures, algorithms, and backend performance

• Production-grade testing using JUnit 5, Mockito

• Experience with clean architecture, DI, modular design

• Comfortable owning CI/CD, code quality, observability

• Familiarity with Docker, Maven, Jenkins

⭐ Nice to Have

• Apache Calcite

• or federated query engines