Senior Backend Engineer (Java)

Benifex; Southampton; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company in the UK is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to develop features for their OneHub products using Java and Spring Boot. This role requires collaboration in a dynamic team, and offers flexibility in work setup. Ideal candidates should have experience with REST APIs and cloud architecture. A competitive salary and various benefits are included.

Benefits

£75,000-90,000 salary

Tech setup of your choice

£/€800 annual learning budget

Flexible work arrangements

25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Birthday off

Two half day wellbeing days

Healthcare cash plan

Income Protection (75%)

Pension scheme

Enhanced parental leave package

£50 monthly allowance

Qualifications

• Proven experience creating Java Spring Boot based services.
• Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB Atlas.
• Experience working in a fast-paced agile environment.

Responsibilities

• Develop new features and innovations for OneHub products.
• Collaborate closely with Principal Backend Engineer.
• Architect and build REST APIs on a distributed cloud solution.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

REST APIs

MongoDB

Golang

Docker

Kubernetes

Cloud architecture

Agile methodologies

Tools

CircleCI

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Job description

Who are Benifex? 💚💜

We are a fast-moving technology company, and one of the most successful providers of online reward and benefits solutions in the world. We believe that everyone deserves an exceptional experience at work, every day, and build workplace technology that makes this happen. Benifex’s mission is to build remarkable experiences that employees love. Today Benifex supports more than five million employees in over 3,000 organisations across more than 100 countries. To help us on our quest to be the best, we need brilliant people on board and that’s where you come in. 🚀

Why should you apply? 🌟

• Impact: work on a product suite used by millions of people that improves employee experience and wellbeing.
• Scale: a big focus of our engineering teams is building features and services to support our customers globally.
• Autonomy: have an input into the product roadmap and technically lead features/services.
• Development: While new services are created in Java, you'll be upskilled in Go to help maintain existing services.
• Top 10 Employer, Sunday Times Best Places to Work Awards
• Work for a profitable, fast-growing market leader in the online reward and benefits space

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship and require to people to be based in the UK or Ireland for this position

Great benefits:

• 💰 £75,000-90,000
• 💻 Tech setup of your choice (MacBook Pro or equivalent, monitors, etc.)
• 📚 £/€800 annual learning budget, plus two hours per week as ‘Focus Fridays’.
• 🤸 Flexible work – choose a working setup that works for you, our only ask is to see you once a quarter in our UK HQ
• ✈️ 25 days holiday plus your local bank holidays
• 🎂 Your birthday off
• ❤️ Two half day wellbeing days
• 🩺 Healthcare cash plan to cover the costs of day to day healthcare
• 🧠 Employee Assistance Plan 24/7 365 support
• 🤒 Income Protection (75%) and life assurance (4x salary)
• 🤑 Pension scheme
• 🌟 Enhanced parental leave package - 26 weeks fully paid maternity leave and 4 weeks fully paid paternity leave
• 💳 £50 monthly allowance to spend on whatever takes your fancy, your very own Benifex card will be topped up at the start of each month!

Role Overview 🚀

Our Product Engineering department is in an exciting phase of growth, and we are actively seeking Senior Backend Engineers who specialise in Java and Spring Boot.

In this role, you will focus exclusively on developing new features and innovations for our OneHub products, addressing unique challenges in the employee experience domain.

You’ll be part of a team that follows the “Shape‑Up” methodology, a development process pioneered by Basecamp. This approach involves building projects in focused cycles, allowing for more creativity and effective problem‑solving.

You will collaborate closely with our Principal Backend Engineer to architect optimal solutions and strategies for our OneHub products. Your primary responsibility will be working with Java and Spring Boot to build REST API's within a cloud‑based environment equipped with CI/CD pipelines.

You will have the autonomy and responsibility to uphold code quality, security, performance, and maintainability, adhering to development principles and best practices.

We have a diverse team of engineers from various backgrounds. If you're passionate about learning and growing in a dynamic environment, we'd love to hear from you.

Stack: Java, Spring Boot, REST API's, MongoDB, Golang, Docker, Kubernetes, GCP.

Responsibilities 🤘

• Working with a small unit of a Product Manager and Engineers in the squad to understand priorities and requirements to deliver within the sprints
• Hands‑on collaboration within the squad to analyse, refine, system design and deliver new Product features
• Working with the wider Backend Chapter and Principal Backend Engineer to architect the best solutions and strategy for the OneHub products
• Autonomy to evolve the current standards and increase the documentation across the Backend Chapter
• Using backend technologies including but not exclusively, Spring boot, Kubernetes, Java, MongoDB
• Architecting and building REST APIs on a distributed cloud solution

What are we looking for? 🔎

• "Senior" level engineer, both in technical output (leading more complex features/services, technical decision making, owning critical services/projects) and impact on the wider team (mentoring, knowledge sharing, raising standards)
• Passion for engineering and continuous learning
• A pragmatic approach, someone with the ability to understand the big picture (business, product and tech), factor in all considerations and choose the best way forward
• A mindset of taking ownership, identifying and solving problems, able to navigate complex challenges.
• Proven experience creating Java Spring Boot based services in a service‑based architecture
• Someone driven to learnGo and gethands‑on experience coding with it
• Experience working on cloud architecture and software built on REST API’s with the ability to implement high quality code and deliver on time
• Experience working within a fast‑paced agile environment with the focus of reducing WIP and getting stories to “Done”
• Good understanding of event‑driven architecture (EDA) and programming principles
• Experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB Atlas

Bonus points for:

• CircleCI or similar CI/CD tools
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Experience with Go
• Keycloak IDP
• Monitoring and logging tools like Prometheus and Grafana
• Knowledge of containerisation and Kubernetes
• Open source collaboration

Even if you don't meet all of the requirements for this role, we encourage you to apply! We are looking for talented and passionate individuals who are eager to learn and grow. We also offer a variety of other roles, so please check out our careers page to see if there is something else that might be a good fit for you.

Our interview process

Benifex understand the need to have a fast and efficient process, the below will all be completed in the shortest time possible, typically a 2-2.5 week timeframe.

• 📞 Initial informal call with the Talent team
• ⏳ Interview with our Engineering Director 30-45 min
• 🧪 Technical Task
• 🔎 Technical Interview - 60 min
• 🤩 Final interview with VP of Engineering - 30-45 min

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected. We believe that diversity and inclusion are essential to our success, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

We are a proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme.

If you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage during the recruitment process, please let us know with your application.