Staff Software Engineer (Java) AI & Developer Experience (fmd)

Sonar; Bochum; Vor Ort; EUR 70.000 - 90.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

A leading AI development company located in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to enhance developer tools using Java and TypeScript. You'll be responsible for defining a hybrid engineering vision while guiding architectural improvements. Ideal candidates should have a passion for innovative engineering practices and a drive for impactful results. The company prioritizes learning, teamwork, and flexibility, offering a supportive environment for professional growth.

Leistungen

Pension Scheme (1st Pillar)

Pension Scheme (2nd Pillar)

28 PTO days

Public transport reimbursement

Annual global kickoff event

Qualifikationen

• Significant professional experience in Java, TypeScript, or C#.
• Understanding of asynchronous programming and concurrency.
• Passionate about the impact of your work on the developer experience.

Aufgaben

• Design and implement intelligent guidance systems for developers.
• Drive architectural decisions to enhance IDE Extensions.
• Contribute to the development of the Sonar MCP Server.

Kenntnisse

Java

Asynchronous programming

UI/Compose

TypeScript

C#

Jobbeschreibung

Sonar helps prevent code quality and code security issues from reaching production amplifies developers productivity in concert with AI assistants and improves the developer experience with streamlined workflows. Sonar analyzes all code regardless of who writes it your internal team genAI or third parties resulting in more secure reliable and maintainable applications. Rooted in the open source community Sonars solutions support over 30 programming languages frameworks and infrastructure technologies. Today Sonar is used by 7M developers and 400K organizations worldwide including the DoD Microsoft NASA MasterCard Siemens and T-Mobile.

We believe in developing great products that are supported by great internal teams and a strong culture. We are highly committed to and obsessed with the company users each other and our open source community. We have high standards and hold each other accountable for acting with positivity dedication thoughtfulness empathy and passion daily.

We are deliberate with our decisions with high clarity of intention. At the same time we feel extreme urgency and move forward quickly.

And lastly we are highly effective and operationally efficient. We operate collectively as One Team to accomplish our goals.

At Sonar CODE is more than just an acronym its a mindset that defines daily operations.

Why You Should Apply

At Sonar we’re a group of brilliant motivated and driven professionals working hard to help supercharge developers to build better faster. Sonar helps to continuously improve code quality and code security while reducing developer toil. This means that developers can focus on doing more of what they love and less of what they dont. Our solutions dont just solve symptoms of problems we help fix issues at the source for all code whether its developer-written AI-generated or from third parties.

We have a dynamic culture with employees worldwide and hub offices in the USA, Switzerland, the UK, Singapore and Germany. Team members should be able to come to work every day, work on a product they are proud of, love what they do and feel energized by their peers. With our roots deep in the open source community we're all about the mission: supercharge developers to build better faster.

The Impact You Will Have

At Sonar our team owns the external development experiences including the SonarQube IDE Extensions (VS Code, IntelliJ, Visual Studio) and the Sonar Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. With over 1 million active users we operate at a scale few developer tools achieve. The tools we build here are on the critical path for the worlds most impactful engineering teams having a tangible high-stakes impact on the global software supply chain.

We are navigating a massive industry shift from manually written to AI‑co‑authored code. As a Senior/Staff member of the IDE Experience squad you will define the vision for this hybrid engineering future architecting an inner loop that anticipates the needs of both human engineers and AI Agents. You will build the critical infrastructure that empowers the engineers to move fast ensuring that all code is born clean and secure before a PR is ever opened.

What You Will Do Daily

• Build the Real‑Time Feedback Loop. Design and implement intelligent guidance systems that proactively steer both developers and AI agents toward secure patterns, ensuring that security flaws and architectural drift are eliminated before a PR is opened.
• Lead the Technical Evolution. Drive architectural decisions for the IDE Extensions and their backend, solve for constraints such as memory and CPU footprint, provide low‑latency responses, and ensure we never block the UI thread to protect the engineer flow state.
• Architect the Context Engine for AI Agents. Contribute to the development of the Sonar MCP Server and Sonar CLI, enabling local AI agents (e.g., Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude, Code) to request project rules and security context before generating code.
• Champion a Unified Experience. Ensure our tools feel native in every IDE while sharing a robust logic core, bridging the gap between platform‑specific implementations (TypeScript/C#) and our shared backend (Java) to prevent feature fragmentation across the ecosystem.
• Act as a Technical Force Multiplier. Mentor the squad through design reviews and collaborate with the Code Quality and Security teams to ensure our static analysis engine runs efficiently in a live local environment.

The Experience You Will Need

• Deep Engineering Foundation. Significant professional experience (typically 7 years) in one of the following ecosystems: Java (JVM internals, IntelliJ Platform, UI/Compose), TypeScript (VS Code Extension API), or C# (.NET Visual Studio Extensibility). You are a specialist in one but capable of learning and contributing to the others as needed.
• Systems‑Level Thinking. Understanding of asynchronous programming, concurrency, and Inter‑Process Communication (IPC). Experience with LSP or MCP is a plus.
• Product‑Minded Engineering. You don’t just take tickets. You are passionate about the impact of your work, proactively bring new ideas to the roadmap, and care about zero friction flow.
• Vision for Agentic Coding. Understanding that the IDE role is changing; desire to build infrastructure that allows AI to be autonomous and safe.
• Collaborative Leadership. Experience guiding engineers toward technical excellence; fosters a culture of empathy, continuous learning, and dogfooding our own tools.

Why You Will Love It Here

• Our culture and mission set us apart. We have a dynamic work culture that values respect and kindness and embraces the right to fail (and get right back up again!).
• Great people make a great company. We value people skills as much as technical skills and strive to keep things friendly while still being passionate leaders in our domains.
• We have a flexible work policy that includes 3 days in‑office and 2 days work‑from‑home each week for those located near our office locations; some locations such as Dubai, India, Japan and Australia operate fully remotely.
• We have a growth mindset. We love learning and believe continuous education is critical to our ever‑changing industry; new skills are necessary and we’re happy to help our team acquire them.
• As the leader in our field our products and services are as strong as our internal team members.
• We embrace transparency with regular meetings cascading messages and updates on the growth and success of our organization.

Benefits of Working With Sonar

• Pension Scheme: 1st Pillar (Unterstützungskasse) – Automatic financed by Sonar 3% of gross salary, an additional benefit in addition to your salary.
• Pension Scheme: 2nd Pillar (bAV) – Voluntary 15% contribution by Sonar from social security savings.
• Robust time‑off allocations with 28 PTO days for employees based out of the Geneva region plus additional days based on seniority and circumstances.
• Sonar recognizes holidays on working calendar days. If the holiday date occurs on a Saturday we’ll recognize the day on the preceding Friday. If the holiday date occurs on a Sunday we’ll recognize the day on the following Monday.
• Public transport reimbursement of 60% for annual subscription.
• Global workforce with employees in 20 countries representing 35 unique nationalities.
• Annual kick‑off somewhere in the world where we meet to build relationships and goals for the company.

We Value Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Sonar we believe that our diversity is our strength. We are a global company that values and respects different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best. We are proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer and welcome all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

All offers of employment at Sonar are contingent upon the precise results of a comprehensive background check and reference verification conducted before the start date.

Applications that are submitted through agencies or third‑party recruiters will not be considered.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Required Experience: Staff IC

Key Skills: Bootstrap, Attorney, Gallery, Instrumentation, Banking & Finance

Employment Type: Full‑Time

Experience: years

Vacancy: 1

Staff Software Engineer Java AI Developer Experience fmd • Bochum, North Rhine‑Westphalia, Germany