Principal Backend Development Engineer (Contract Role)

Key responsibilities

• Own the architecture, design, development, testing and ongoing improvement of core backend services and enterprise applications, primarily using Java.

• Design and evolve modular microservice architectures and service interfaces that support scalability, maintainability and reliable integration.

• Engineer high-concurrency, high-availability backend systems, identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks across application and service layers.

• Design robust business workflows and data-processing components, with careful attention to data integrity, consistency, traceability and recovery.

• Set technical direction through architecture reviews, design discussions, code reviews and clear engineering standards.

• Lead complex production investigations, coordinate root-cause analysis and implement preventive improvements to system stability and operational reliability.

• Strengthen software delivery practices through automated testing, continuous integration and deployment, release controls and development tooling.

• Work closely with product, QA, infrastructure and other engineering stakeholders to translate requirements into maintainable technical solutions.

• Coach and mentor engineers, support technical capability development and promote sound engineering practices across the team.

• Evaluate and responsibly adopt engineering tools, including AI-assisted development tools, where they improve implementation, debugging, test validation and technical documentation.

Essential requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology or a closely related discipline.

• At least 10 years of professional software development experience, including substantial hands-on backend engineering experience.

• Strong, practical Java development experience and a track record of designing, building and maintaining enterprise-scale backend applications.

• Demonstrated experience with microservice architecture, service integration, API design and distributed application principles.

• Experience designing or operating systems with demanding concurrency, throughput, availability, scalability and reliability requirements.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, application performance, data integrity, fault handling and maintainable system design.

• Experience leading technical design decisions, conducting code and design reviews, and taking ownership of complex engineering deliverables.

• Practical experience with automated testing and software delivery practices, including Docker, Jenkins and CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience diagnosing production issues, managing releases and improving the stability and quality of live systems.

• Ability to communicate technical trade-offs clearly and collaborate effectively across engineering and business functions.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and raise the technical standards of a development team.

Advantageous experience

• Experience integrating AI-assisted development tools into established engineering workflows, with appropriate human review, testing and quality controls.

• Experience designing enterprise workflows involving complex business rules, reconciliation, data migration or high-volume order and inventory processing.

• Experience establishing engineering standards, improving development productivity or leading cross-functional technical initiatives.

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