Staff Java Developer

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

Join a leading retail technology company as a Staff Java Developer and take technical leadership in building robust, scalable backend solutions that power modern retail operations worldwide. 

You'll be working for a technology-driven retail organization building a fantastic engineering team where experienced developers thrive. As a Staff-level engineer, you'll take ownership of technical aspects of development, lead complex initiatives across teams, mentor junior developers, and contribute to the entire software development lifecycle from requirements gathering through design, coding, testing, and deployment using cutting-edge technologies including Java, Spring Boot, Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, Kafka, and GraphQL Federation.

This role positions you as a technical leader who shapes engineering practices, influences architectural decisions, and drives excellence across the organization. You'll work with talented individuals in a fast-paced environment, solving complex technical problems while building high-quality software systems that impact millions of retail customers. Your expertise in Java backend development combined with leadership capabilities will directly influence team growth, technical strategy, and the success of critical retail platform initiatives.

Critical Requirements: This is a staff/lead-level position requiring minimum 10+ years of software development experience with strong focus on Java backend development. MANDATORY experience leading complex initiatives, collaborating with teams on technical designs, coaching and mentoring junior engineers, and influencing engineering practices. Strong expertise required in Java, Spring Boot, Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, Kafka, GraphQL Federation, Terraform, and GitHub. B2 English essential for technical leadership and cross-team collaboration.

PROJECT & CONTEXT

You'll be building mission-critical retail technology systems that enable seamless customer experiences, transaction processing, inventory management, and operational excellence across the retail organization's technology ecosystem. As a Staff Java Developer, you'll take technical ownership across the full software development lifecycle, designing and implementing robust backend solutions using modern Java, Spring Boot microservices, and cloud-native architectures on Azure platform.

Technical leadership is fundamental to this role - you'll lead complex initiatives that span multiple teams and systems, collaborate extensively with other engineering teams to agree on technical designs and architectural approaches, drive consensus on technical decisions across stakeholders, and own end-to-end delivery of sophisticated features and systems. Your ability to navigate organizational complexity, build alignment, and execute on strategic technical initiatives is critical for success.

Mentorship and coaching define your impact beyond code - you'll coach and mentor more junior engineers through pair programming, code reviews, and technical guidance, influence and improve engineering practices within your team and across the organization, establish standards and best practices that elevate engineering quality, and contribute to team growth by developing engineering talent. Your leadership shapes not just systems but the engineering culture and capabilities of the entire organization.

Your deep Java expertise with focus on modern Java versions enables you to leverage latest language features, performance improvements, and ecosystem advancements. You'll design and implement backend solutions using Spring Boot and related Spring ecosystem frameworks including Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Cloud, building enterprise-grade microservices that are maintainable, testable, and scalable. Understanding Spring best practices, dependency injection, AOP, and framework internals ensures you build production-quality applications.

Azure Cloud platform is your deployment environment - you'll design cloud-native applications leveraging Azure services including Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Service Bus, and other platform capabilities. Understanding Azure architecture patterns, security best practices, networking, and cost optimization ensures you build reliable, secure, and efficient cloud solutions for retail operations.

Kubernetes orchestration is essential for deploying and managing containerized applications at scale - you'll containerize Java applications using Docker, deploy to Kubernetes clusters (likely Azure Kubernetes Service), configure services, ingress, persistent storage, implement health checks and readiness probes, and understand pod lifecycle, scaling strategies, and operational patterns that ensure high-availability retail services.

Apache Kafka powers event-driven architectures and real-time data streaming - you'll design and implement event streaming applications, build publish-subscribe patterns for retail events (orders, inventory updates, customer actions), ensure reliable message delivery, handle data consistency in distributed systems, and design event schemas that enable system integration and real-time processing across microservices.

GraphQL Federation enables unified API layers across distributed services - you'll design and implement federated GraphQL schemas that compose multiple backend services into cohesive APIs, enable flexible data querying for frontend applications and integration partners, understand schema stitching, federation gateway patterns, and performance optimization for GraphQL queries serving retail experiences.

Infrastructure as Code with Terraform ensures repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure deployment - you'll define Azure resources declaratively, manage infrastructure state and versioning, implement CI/CD for infrastructure changes, and ensure environment consistency across development, staging, and production. Your Terraform expertise brings software engineering discipline to infrastructure management.

Git and GitHub form the foundation of collaborative development - you'll use GitHub for code repositories, pull requests, code reviews providing thoughtful feedback, and project management. CI/CD practices automate testing and deployment - you'll implement continuous integration pipelines, automated testing strategies, build automation, and deployment workflows that enable rapid, reliable delivery of features to production.

Testing excellence is paramount for retail systems - you'll implement comprehensive unit testing, integration testing, and follow test-driven development (TDD) practices ensuring code quality and reliability. Understanding shift-left testing approaches that catch issues early in development cycle prevents defects from reaching production systems handling critical retail transactions.

Object-oriented programming principles and design patterns guide your architectural decisions - you'll apply SOLID principles, Gang of Four patterns, and clean code practices to create maintainable, extensible systems. Your solid OOP foundation enables you to design elegant solutions to complex technical challenges while mentoring others on software design fundamentals.

Working in Agile development environments, you'll participate in sprint planning, daily standups, retrospectives, and collaborative problem-solving, take ownership of features and technical components, provide estimates and technical input for requirements, and contribute to continuous improvement of development processes and team effectiveness.

Core Tech Stack: Java (modern versions), Spring Boot, Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, Kafka, GraphQL Federation, Terraform, GitHub

Development Focus: Backend microservices, event-driven architecture, cloud-native applications, distributed systems, RESTful and GraphQL APIs

Domain: Retail technology, e-commerce operations, transaction processing, inventory systems

Leadership: Technical initiative leadership, cross-team collaboration, mentorship, engineering practice improvement

Scale: Enterprise retail systems, high-volume transactions, mission-critical customer-facing applications

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR (Required)

Software Development Experience: MANDATORY - Minimum 10+ years of experience in software development with strong focus on Java backend development and proven track record delivering production systems at scale - this is the core requirement

Complex Initiative Leadership: MANDATORY - Experience leading complex technical initiatives that span multiple teams, coordinating work across organizational boundaries, and driving strategic projects to successful completion

Technical Design Collaboration: MANDATORY - Critical experience collaborating with other teams to agree on technical designs, building consensus on architectural approaches, and ensuring alignment across engineering organizations

Coaching & Mentoring: MANDATORY - Proven experience coaching and mentoring more junior engineers through code reviews, pair programming, technical guidance, and career development support

Engineering Practice Influence: MANDATORY - Demonstrated ability influencing and improving engineering practices within teams, establishing standards, driving quality improvements, and elevating team capabilities

Modern Java Expertise: MANDATORY - Deep proficiency in Java with strong focus on backend development - experience with newer Java versions (Java 11+, Java 17+, Java 21+) is a significant plus

Spring Boot Framework: MANDATORY - Production experience with Spring Boot for building microservices, RESTful APIs, and enterprise applications using Spring ecosystem

Object-Oriented Programming: Solid knowledge of object-oriented programming principles including SOLID principles, design patterns (Gang of Four), and clean code practices

Azure Cloud Platform: MANDATORY - Production experience with Microsoft Azure Cloud including core services, cloud architecture patterns, security, networking, and deployment strategies

Kubernetes Orchestration: MANDATORY - Hands-on experience with Kubernetes for deploying and managing containerized applications, understanding pod management, services, scaling, and operations

Apache Kafka: MANDATORY - Production experience with Apache Kafka for event streaming, pub-sub messaging patterns, event-driven architecture, and distributed data processing

GraphQL Federation: MANDATORY - Experience with GraphQL Federation for building federated API gateways, schema composition, resolver implementation, and federated architecture patterns

Terraform Infrastructure: MANDATORY - Hands-on experience using Terraform for infrastructure-as-code, provisioning cloud resources, managing infrastructure state, and implementing automation

Git & GitHub: MANDATORY - Proficiency in Git version control and GitHub for source code management, branching strategies, pull requests, code review workflows, and collaboration

Testing Expertise: Strong experience with unit testing frameworks (JUnit, Mockito), integration testing, and test-driven development (TDD) practices with shift-left testing approach

CI/CD Practices: Proficiency in continuous integration and continuous deployment including automated testing, build automation, pipeline configuration, and deployment strategies

Agile Methodologies: Experience working in Agile development environments including Scrum ceremonies, iterative delivery, and agile engineering practices

Problem-Solving Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities for debugging complex distributed systems, identifying architectural issues, and resolving technical challenges

Communication Excellence: Excellent communication and teamwork skills for collaborating across technical and business stakeholders, articulating technical decisions, and building consensus

Design Patterns: Deep understanding of software design patterns and their practical application in building scalable, maintainable systems

English Proficiency: B2 level (Upper Intermediate) or higher in English for technical communication, documentation, collaboration, and leadership across distributed teams

Work Authorization: Must be located in Portugal with eligibility for full remote work

NICE TO HAVE (Preferred)

Additional Spring Frameworks: Deep expertise in Spring Cloud for microservices patterns, Spring Data JPA, Spring Security, Spring Batch, and other Spring ecosystem components

Reactive Programming: Experience with Spring WebFlux, Project Reactor, or RxJava for building non-blocking, reactive applications

Microservices Patterns: Deep knowledge of microservices architecture patterns including service discovery, circuit breakers, API gateways, distributed tracing, and resilience patterns

Docker Expertise: Advanced Docker skills beyond Kubernetes including image optimization, multi-stage builds, Docker Compose, and container security

Azure Advanced Services: Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Service Bus, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Redis Cache, Azure Key Vault, Azure Monitor

Event Sourcing & CQRS: Knowledge of event sourcing and CQRS patterns for building scalable distributed systems

Domain-Driven Design: Understanding of DDD principles, bounded contexts, aggregates, and tactical patterns for complex business domains

Performance Engineering: Advanced skills in application performance profiling, optimization, memory management, garbage collection tuning, and scalability

Distributed Systems: Deep understanding of distributed systems principles including consistency models, consensus algorithms, CAP theorem, and distributed computing challenges

Additional Cloud Platforms: Experience with AWS or GCP demonstrating cloud versatility beyond Azure

Service Mesh: Knowledge of service mesh technologies like Istio or Linkerd for microservices communication management

API Design Excellence: Deep expertise in RESTful API design, API versioning strategies, OpenAPI/Swagger documentation, and API governance

Database Technologies: Strong experience with both SQL databases (PostgreSQL, Azure SQL) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Cosmos DB, Redis)

Message Queue Systems: Experience with additional messaging platforms like RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SQS beyond Kafka

gRPC: Knowledge of gRPC for high-performance service-to-service communication and Protocol Buffers

GraphQL Advanced: Deep GraphQL expertise including subscriptions, batching, caching strategies, DataLoader pattern, and performance optimization

Monitoring & Observability: Experience implementing monitoring solutions using Prometheus, Grafana, Application Insights, ELK Stack, or distributed tracing platforms

Security Best Practices: Deep understanding of application security including OWASP Top 10, secure coding practices, authentication/authorization patterns, and security in microservices

Retail Domain Knowledge: Previous experience in retail technology, e-commerce platforms, inventory management, point-of-sale systems, or retail operations

Payment Systems: Experience with payment processing, payment gateways, PCI compliance, or financial transaction systems

High-Availability Systems: Experience designing and operating high-availability systems with SLA requirements and uptime guarantees

DevOps Practices: Strong DevOps understanding including infrastructure automation, monitoring, incident response, and site reliability engineering

Elasticsearch: Experience with Elasticsearch for search, indexing, and analytics capabilities

Architectural Leadership: Track record of architectural leadership, making strategic technical decisions, and defining technical roadmaps

Technical Writing: Strong technical documentation skills for architectural decisions, design documents, API documentation, and runbooks

Open Source Contributions: Active contributions to open source projects or maintainer experience with Java ecosystem libraries

Conference Speaking: Experience speaking at technical conferences or meetups, sharing knowledge with broader community

Scala or Kotlin: Knowledge of JVM languages beyond Java like Scala or Kotlin

Location: Portugal (100% Remote)