Senior Software Engineer - Backend & Distributed Systems

Ford Motor; Chennai; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 3,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Ford Motor in Chennai, India is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design and optimize high-throughput distributed microservices and data pipelines. You will own PostgreSQL performance, Kafka event workflows, and low-latency REST APIs.

You will lead complex business logic, champion CI/CD, code quality, and scalable data architectures in a fast-paced backend platform supporting large-scale transactions.

Qualifications

• 6–9 years of backend development in large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in Java (11/17+), Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA/Hibernate.
• Strong PostgreSQL performance tuning and data modeling for multi-terabyte footprints.
• Experience with Apache Kafka and streaming architectures.
• CI/CD, GitHub workflows, and automated testing tooling.

Responsibilities

• Lead implementation of complex business logic in distributed microservices.
• Architect resilient distributed workflows and data pipelines across systems.
• Tune performance, memory usage, and RAM optimization for large DBs.
• Review code and enforce high test coverage and documentation.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

PostgreSQL

Apache Kafka

REST API

Git/GitHub

Testcontainers

Tools

Redis

PgBouncer

JUnit 5

Job description

Senior Software Engineer

The MPS2 platform handles business-critical incentive calculations, marketing program lifecycle management, and high-volume transaction processing across a 2 + TB database instance backed by 500+ GB RAM. We are looking for an experienced Senior Software Engineer who excels at designing and optimizing high-throughput distributed microservices, event-driven pipelines, and relational database internals. In this role, you will lead the implementation of complex business logic, architect resilient distributed workflows, and act as a subject matter expert in data engineering best practices, query performance tuning, and low-latency API design.

1. Data-Intensive Architecture & PostgreSQL Mastery Design schema structures, partitioning strategies (declarative partitioning, sharding, or archival), and indexing models for a multi-terabyte PostgreSQL footprint. Diagnose and eliminate performance bottlenecks using EXPLAIN ANALYZE, index optimization (B-tree, BRIN, GIN), connection pool tuning (HikariCP / PgBouncer), and lock contention mitigation. Implement robust data processing patterns (batch ETL/ELT pipelines, streaming transformations, CDC, chunked bulk operations) to safeguard system stability and RAM utilization.
2. Distributed Microservices & Event-Driven Systems Develop resilient, high-concurrency microservices using Java (17+) and Spring Boot . Architect and maintain Apache Kafka event pipelines: topic modeling, partition keys, producer/consumer group tuning, idempotent consumers, dead-letter queues (DLQ), and schema evolution. Implement distributed patterns: Saga pattern, Outbox pattern, caching strategies (Redis/in-memory), and distributed locking to ensure strict data consistency across services.
3. Engineering Quality & Code Reviews Work closely with the Lead Engineer to enforce clean code, high test coverage (unit/integration/contract testing), and system documentation. Conduct meaningful GitHub PR reviews aligned with design documents, business objectives, and automated tooling ( GitHub Copilot , CodeGuardians ).
4. Full-Stack Awareness Build and consume secure, performant REST APIs (OpenAPI/Swagger). Support frontend integration with Angular micro-frontends/components as needed.

Experience: 6-9 years of hands-on software development experience with large-scale backend and data-intensive distributed architectures.

• Core Backend: Deep expertise in Java (11/17+) , Spring Boot , Spring Data JPA/Hibernate, Spring Cloud, and RESTful API design.
• Database & Big Data Practices: Advanced hands-on experience with PostgreSQL in large-scale deployments ( 1+ TB) . Proven ability to optimize complex joins, window functions, and tune memory parameters (work_mem, shared_buffers, etc.).
• Messaging & Streaming: Production experience with Apache Kafka (cluster architecture, consumer lag monitoring, partition sizing, Avro/JSON serialization).
• Distributed Computing: Solid foundation in distributed systems concepts (CAP theorem, transactions, eventual consistency, concurrency controls).
• Code Quality & CI/CD: Proficiency with Git/GitHub, GitHub Actions, automated test suites (JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers), and code scanners.

Experience Level Senior Level