Sr. Backend Developer (Java & Kafka)

Responsibilities:
Backend & API Development: Design, develop, and maintain performant, enterprise-grade Java and Spring Boot backend services and REST APIs supporting mission-critical operational workflows (yard, equipment, and consist management).
Event-Driven Architecture: Lead the design and implementation of Kafka-based event-driven integrations, managing topics, partitions, consumer groups, producers, and messaging workflows.
System Integration & Batch Processing: Build scalable integration patterns for internal and external systems using modern messaging, batch processing, data pipelines, and data synchronization patterns.
Database Optimization: Design and optimize PostgreSQL database models, complex queries, indexing strategies, and data access patterns for high-throughput applications.
Cloud & DevOps: Deploy and support cloud-native applications using AWS services (ECS/Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway, S3) and contribute to CI/CD automation pipelines.
Technical Leadership: Perform rigorous code reviews, mentor developers, promote engineering best practices, and ensure strict adherence to security, compliance, and observability standards.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Owners, Architects, UX designers, and business stakeholders in an Agile/Scrum environment to refine requirements and troubleshoot production issues.
Qualifications
Experience: 8+ years of hands-on experience developing enterprise applications using Java, with 5+ years focused on Spring Boot, REST APIs, and microservice architectures.
Kafka Expertise: 3+ years of deep, hands-on experience building, deploying, and troubleshooting Apache Kafka solutions, including a strong grasp of event-driven and domain-driven design patterns.
Database Skills: Proven track record with PostgreSQL (or similar relational databases) database design, advanced SQL optimization, and query tuning.
AWS Cloud: Solid experience with core AWS services, including ECS/Fargate, Lambda, S3, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager, and infrastructure tooling like CloudFormation or CodePipeline.
DevOps & Tooling: Familiarity with modern CI/CD and DevOps workflows using Git, Jenkins, Bitbucket, Jira, and SonarQube.
Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
Bonus Points (Preferred): Prior experience in the transportation, railroad, or logistics industries; familiarity with frontend architectures like Angular; experience with Schema Registry/Avro; or hands-on enterprise security knowledge (OAuth2/OIDC, Azure Entra ID).