Java Backend Engineer with SRE & Guidewire expereince
Hybrid Toronto role combining Java backend development with SRE duties: automating manual toil, incident response/on-call, defining SLOs and error budgets, and building monitoring with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and PagerDuty. Core stack is Java/Spring Boot with REST APIs; Guidewire insurance platform experience is a strong plus.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Sre
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Demonstrated experience developing software in Java or a comparable object-oriented language
- Working knowledge of REST APIs, HTTP methods, JSON, and common API design principles
- Familiarity with Spring Boot or another modern backend framework
- Experience writing automated unit tests and debugging application failures
- Familiarity with Git and pull-request-based development
- Ability to read technical documentation, investigate unfamiliar code, and explain findings clearly
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Willingness to work collaboratively with developers, testers, analysts, and stakeholders
Nice to have
- Guidewire PolicyCenter, Gosu, Guidewire Cloud APIs, commercial P&C insurance, underwriting, policy administration, or workflow automation
- API design, integration, and security: OpenAPI/Swagger, JSON Schema, Apigee or other API gateway, OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, certificate-based security
- Event and data integration: Kafka, Schema Registry, event-driven architecture, asynchronous processing, PostgreSQL, Liquibase
- Cloud delivery and engineering platforms: GitHub Actions, Harness, AWS, Kubernetes, HashiCorp Vault, infrastructure as code, CI/CD
- Automated testing and partner integration: Postman, JUnit, Mockito, Playwright
Full description
Role: Java Backend Engineer with SRE & Guidewire expereince
Location: Toronto, ON – Hybrid
Job Description:
Automation and Reducing Toil: SREs write code and build tools to automate repetitive manual tasks (known as \"toil\"), aiming to spend roughly 50% of their time on software and engineering projects.
Incident Response and Management: They act as first-line responders for critical emergencies, handle on-call rotations, troubleshoot failures, and restore service.
SLOs, SLAs, and Error Budgets: They define Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), managing \"error budgets\" to balance release speed with system stability.
Monitoring and Observability: They set up logging, metrics, and alerting systems (using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or PagerDuty) to detect problems before they impact users.
Post-Incident Reviews: They conduct root cause analysis (postmortems) to ensure failures do not repeat.
Capacity Planning: They analyze traffic and usage patterns to forecast future infrastructure and hardware needs.
Cross-Team Collaboration: They work alongside software developers to design resilient architectures and make applications more reliable by design.
Required Skills:
Primary qualifications
Demonstrated experience developing software in Java or a comparable object-oriented language.
Working knowledge of REST APIs, HTTP methods, JSON, and common API design principles.
Familiarity with Spring Boot or another modern backend framework.
Experience writing automated unit tests and debugging application failures.
Familiarity with Git and pull-request-based development.
Ability to read technical documentation, investigate unfamiliar code, and explain findings clearly.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Willingness to work collaboratively with developers, testers, analysts, and stakeholders.
Additional preferred qualifications
Guidewire and commercial insurance: Guidewire PolicyCenter, Gosu, Guidewire Cloud APIs, commercial property and casualty insurance, underwriting, policy administration, or workflow automation.
API design, integration, and security: OpenAPI/Swagger, JSON Schema, Apigee or another API gateway, API Developer Portal, OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, or certificate-based security.
Event and data integration: Kafka, Schema Registry, event-driven architecture, asynchronous processing, PostgreSQL, Liquibase, or database migration tooling.