Lead Backend Engineer: Microservices & Kafka Architect

Empower; Greenwood Village (CO); On-site; USD 114,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision and life保险

401(k) retirement plan with company 6%

Tuition reimbursement

Casual work environment

Paid time off + holidays

Volunteer time

BRGs and inclusion programs

Job summary

Empower seeks a Lead Software Engineer to design, develop, and deliver scalable backend enterprise applications. You will lead engineering teams to build microservices with Spring, Kafka, and modern architectures, driving technical direction and code quality.

You will mentor engineers, champion TDD/BDD practices, and collaborate across product and security teams to ensure high availability and performance in Java 11+ environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in CS/Engineering or related field.
• 7+ years of professional software development, incl. 2+ years in lead/mentorship.
• Strong Java expertise (11+).
• Experience with Spring/Spring Boot and RESTful services.
• Deep microservices and distributed systems knowledge.
• Proven Kafka real-time streaming development experience.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Proficiency in TDD/BDD practices and modern testing.
• Solid software design patterns and architecture understanding.
• Git and CI/CD expertise, plus leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of microservices using Spring/Spring Boot.
• Architect and build real-time streaming apps with Kafka.
• Define technical strategy and oversee full SDLC from requirements to deployment.
• Mentor engineers and conduct design/code reviews for quality.
• Champion TDD and BDD practices across teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams for secure, scalable software.
• Drive best practices in system design, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Optimize performance and reliability of applications.
• Guide architectural decisions aligned with business goals.

Skills

Java 11+

Spring Experience

Microservices

Apache Kafka

TDD/BDD

Leadership

SQL/NoSQL

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Hibernate/JPA

Git

CI/CD

Docker/Kubernetes

RESTful APIs

Job description

Empower seeks a Lead Software Engineer to design, develop, and deliver scalable backend enterprise applications. You will lead engineering teams to build microservices with Spring, Kafka, and modern architectures, driving technical direction and code quality.

You will mentor engineers, champion TDD/BDD practices, and collaborate across product and security teams to ensure high availability and performance in Java 11+ environments.