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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Skills

Concurrent Engineering, Design, Computer Engineering, Development, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, Root Cause Analysis, Information Technology, Traceability, Computer Science, Microservices Design, Data Integrity, Backend Testing, application performance, Release Engineering, Technical Infrastructure, Engineering Standards Audit and Assessment