Senior DevOps-Backend Engineer (Java) (Remote)

The Senior Backend Engineer with DevOps Focus serves as a primary backend developer (70% time) with specialized responsibility for development infrastructure and environment management (30% time). This engineer contributes significantly to core application development while ensuring fast, reliable deployment pipelines and supporting lower environments to accelerate the development team's ability to promote artifacts to production.

Backend Development Responsibilities (70% Time Allocation)

• Service Development: Primary contributor to gateway project microservices development using Java, Spring Framework, and AWS services
• Feature Implementation: Develop assigned features and components with same accountability as other Senior Backend Engineers
• API Development: Build and maintain APIs with emphasis on deployment-friendly design and cloud optimization
• Database Integration: Implement data access layers and database integration with deployment and environment considerations
• Testing & Quality: Write comprehensive unit tests, integration tests, and participate in code review processes
• Performance Engineering: Focus on application performance, scalability, and cloud optimization

DevOps & Environment Management Responsibilities (30% Time Allocation)

• Lower Environment Management: Own and maintain development, staging, and testing environments ensuring consistency and reliability
• CI/CD Pipeline Optimization: Build and maintain automated deployment pipelines focused on fast promotion from dev to production
• Developer Experience: Optimize development workflows, build processes, and deployment speed to maximize team velocity
• Environment Provisioning: Provision and configure development and testing environments using Infrastructure as Code
• Deployment Automation: Automate artifact promotion between environments with proper testing gates
• Monitoring & Alerting: Implement monitoring for lower environments and development workflow optimization
• Development Tooling: Maintain and improve development tools, local environment setup, and developer productivity tools

Core Focus Areas

• Fast Development Cycles: Ensure developers can quickly test, deploy, and iterate in lower environments
• Artifact Promotion: Streamline and automate the process of promoting code from development through staging to production
• Environment Consistency: Maintain parity between development, staging, and production environments
• Developer Productivity: Remove deployment friction and infrastructure blockers for the development team
• Quality Gates: Implement automated testing and validation in deployment pipelines

What They Will NOT Do

• Manage production infrastructure or production deployments (primary production management delegated to dedicated DevOps or SRE)
• Write business logic without considering deployment implications
• Make architectural decisions without Engineering Manager consultation
• Handle product management or stakeholder communication responsibilities
• Serve as primary on-call for production issues (focus on development environment support)

Key Accountabilities & KPIs

Backend Development KPIs (70% focus):

• Feature Delivery: 100% of assigned backend features delivered per sprint commitments
• Code Quality: >90% test coverage, zero critical security vulnerabilities in developed code
• Performance Standards: All developed APIs meet defined SLA requirements (<100ms response time)
• Integration Success: <5% integration test failures for developed services

DevOps & Environment KPIs (30% focus):

• Development Velocity: Deployment time from code commit to development environment <10 minutes
• Environment Availability: >99% uptime for development and staging environments
• Promotion Speed: Artifact promotion from development to staging <30 minutes
• Developer Satisfaction: Development workflow satisfaction scores >4.0/5 from engineering team
• Build Success Rate: >95% successful builds and deployments in lower environments
• Environment Consistency: Zero configuration drift issues between development, staging, and production

Required Backend Development Skills (Java/AWS Stack)

• Java Development: 5+ years Java development experience with Spring Framework and microservices
• AWS Application Development: Experience building cloud-native applications using AWS services
• Database Integration: Strong experience with AWS RDS, PostgreSQL/MySQL, and JPA/Hibernate
• API Development: RESTful API design using Spring Boot with focus on deployability
• Testing: Comprehensive testing experience including unit, integration, and automated testing
• Security: Application security best practices and PCI-DSS compliant development

Required DevOps & Infrastructure Skills

• CI/CD Tools: Proficiency with AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and Git-based workflows
• Infrastructure as Code: Experience with AWS CloudFormation, CDK, or Terraform for environment provisioning
• Container Technologies: Docker experience and basic Kubernetes (EKS) knowledge
• AWS Cloud Services: Solid understanding of AWS services, networking, and deployment patterns
• Monitoring: AWS CloudWatch, logging, and development environment observability
• Scripting: Bash, Python, or similar automation scripting for deployment and environment management

Required Certifications & Preferred Qualifications

Preferred (not required)

• AWS Certification: AWS Developer Associate or Solutions Architect Associate
• Container Experience: Docker and basic Kubernetes operational knowledge

Nice to Have

• Advanced AWS Certifications: AWS DevOps Engineer Associate
• Development Tools: Experience with developer productivity tools and workflow optimization

Preferred Project-Specific Capabilities

• Development Workflow Optimization: Experience improving developer productivity and deployment speed
• Environment Management: Managed development and staging environments for financial or regulated systems
• Fast Deployment Cycles: Built systems supporting rapid development iteration and testing cycles
• Payment System Development: Backend development experience with payment processing systems
• Team Support Focus: Experience in roles supporting other developers' productivity and workflow
• Startup Environment: Worked in fast-paced environments where developer velocity is critical

Success Profile

The ideal candidate is a "Developer-First Infrastructure Engineer" who:

• Primarily a developer who understands infrastructure enough to optimize the development experience
• Focuses on team velocity and removes infrastructure friction for other developers
• Automates repetitive tasks and builds tools that make the entire team more productive
• Thinks deployment-first when building applications and considers operational concerns in development
• Supports team success by ensuring fast, reliable development and testing environments
• Balances development and operations without losing focus on primary development responsibilities