Senior / Lead Backend Java Engineer

assuresoften; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

assuresoften is seeking a veteran Backend Engineer to own and evolve large-scale Java/Spring backend systems. You will design RESTful APIs, build microservices, and integrate with internal and third-party systems while leading architectural decisions.

The role emphasizes mentoring teammates, clean code practices, and leveraging AI-assisted tools to accelerate delivery in an Agile, AWS-based environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with backend focus.

Responsibilities

• Take end-to-end technical ownership of backend systems, features, and integrations.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Lead design discussions and decisions on architecture, APIs, data models, and performance.
• Identify risks early and propose solutions.
• Ensure quality, reliability, and successful delivery of owned solutions.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Microservices

REST APIs

MySQL

ORM (JPA/Hibernate)

AWS

Git

Automated testing

AI code assistants

Tools

Kafka

Claude Code

Codex

Job description

The key to our success is simple; we deliver the highest quality, on time, with passion and commitment, and live every day by a set of great values. We've built a company that fosters long-term careers in an environment of continuous learning, with cutting-edge benefits, tools, and resources. In addition, certifications that endorse our company as a great place to work.

Responsibilities

Technical Ownership & Leadership

• Take end-to-end technical ownership of significant backend systems, features, and integrations.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into well-designed, scalable technical solutions.
• Lead technical design discussions and make or influence decisions involving architecture, frameworks, APIs, data models, performance, and implementation approaches.
• Identify technical risks early and proactively propose solutions.
• Balance short-term delivery requirements with long-term maintainability and platform architecture.
• Take accountability for the quality, reliability, and successful delivery of owned solutions.

Mentorship & Engineering Excellence

• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior and mid-level engineers.
• Conduct meaningful code reviews that improve both code quality and engineering capability.
• Promote clean code, appropriate design patterns, testing, documentation, and engineering best practices.
• Help engineers reason through complex technical problems rather than simply providing answers.
• Raise engineering standards across the team through knowledge sharing and technical leadership.

Backend Engineering

• Design and implement scalable, secure, maintainable, and high-performance backend applications using Java and the Spring ecosystem.
• Design and maintain REST APIs and integrations with internal and third-party systems.
• Build and evolve microservices and distributed backend systems.
• Design appropriate database structures and optimize queries for performance and scalability.
• Troubleshoot complex production problems and drive root-cause analysis through permanent resolution.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and implement effective solutions.
• Write automated tests and maintain high standards for code quality.

Business & Stakeholder Collaboration

• Work directly with product, business, engineering, and technical leadership to understand business goals.
• Ask the right questions to uncover the actual problem behind a request.
• Recommend technical solutions rather than simply implementing requested specifications.
• Clearly communicate architecture decisions, technical constraints, risks, and tradeoffs.
• Build trust with stakeholders through ownership, follow-through, and sound engineering judgment.

AI-Enabled Engineering

• Effectively use modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate implementation, analysis, debugging, testing, and refactoring.
• Critically review AI-generated code rather than accepting generated solutions without engineering validation.
• Identify opportunities where AI-enabled workflows can improve engineering productivity while maintaining code quality.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial hands-on backend development experience.
• Advanced Java knowledge, including strong understanding of core Java, object-oriented programming, concurrency, collections, exception handling, and application performance.
• Strong hands-on experience with Spring / Spring Boot.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building microservices and distributed backend systems.
• Strong experience designing and maintaining REST APIs and third-party integrations.
• Strong relational database knowledge, including schema design, SQL, query optimization, and performance considerations. MySQL experience is preferred.
• Experience with ORM technologies such as JPA/Hibernate or equivalent.
• Experience with Git and modern software development practices.
• Experience with automated testing and code-quality practices.
• Strong hands-on experience AI Code assistants like Claude Code and Codex.
• Experience working in Agile development environments.
• Practical cloud experience, preferably AWS.
• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, production-support, and root-cause-analysis capabilities.
• Personally owning a complex project, system, or major feature from definition through delivery.
• Making or driving significant technical or architectural decisions.
• Improving another engineer's technical capability through mentorship or feedback.
• Handling ambiguous requirements and independently determining how to move forward.
• Working directly with business or product stakeholders to shape a technical solution.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or operating high-volume transactional systems.
• Experience with event-driven architecture, Kafka, asynchronous processing, or high-volume data pipelines.
• Experience with e-commerce, order management, inventory, logistics, payments, or shipping integrations.
• Experience with additional API technologies su