Lifted, an Upwork Company™

Staffing And Recruiting

#120309-BackendSoftwareEngineer,Java/Kotlin

United States CONTRACT Remote Friendly
Market Sentiment
HIGH DEMAND

Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for not-applicable candidates.

The Brief

“#120309 - Backend Software Engineer, Java/Kotlin at Lifted, an Upwork Company™. Skills: Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, REST APIs. Design backend services. Build backend services”

Industry & Context.

Staffing And Recruiting
Problems you'll solve

Make day-to-day technical decisions; Analyze tradeoffs across performance, maintainability, reliability, and delivery speed; Operate with general independence on moderately complex engineering problems

Eligibility Requirements

On-call rotations, Support required U. S. timezone overlap, 40 hours per week

What They're Looking For.

Must Have

3+ years of professional backend engineering experience, Backend development experience with Java as the primary language or Kotlin, Experience working in Java and comfort working in Kotlin environments or codebases, Production experience with Spring Boot, Production experience with Spring Batch or equivalent JVM batch frameworks, fundamentals in REST API design and implementation, Hands-on experience building or consuming GraphQL APIs, Practical experience using LLM-based coding assistants in day-to-day engineering workflows, Ability to speak credibly about when to trust AI-generated code, when to validate it, and when to push back or revise it, Solid understanding of relational and/or NoSQL data stores, Experience with async messaging such as Kafka or similar technologies, Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts, Ability to operate with general independence on moderately complex engineering problems and deliver quality work without close supervision

Nice to Have

Experience operating services at large scale, including millions+ of requests per day, Exposure to GraphQL federation, Apollo Federation, or similar approaches, Observability tooling experience with Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, or similar tools, Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms, Enterprise experience strongly preferred

What You'll Do.

Design backend services

Build backend services

Maintain backend services

Build batch processing pipelines

Tune batch processing pipelines

Use LLM-assisted coding tools

Participate in code reviews

Participate in on-call rotations

Participate in incident response

Participate in observability

Participate in continuous service improvement

Partner with product managers

Partner with architects

Partner with engineers

Deliver against team objectives

How You'll Work.

Team & Collaboration

Collaborate with product, design, platform, and engineering teams; Partner with product managers, architects, and fellow engineers

Full Job Description

We are hiring a Backend Software Engineer to build and maintain scalable backend services supporting high-volume product experiences. This is a hands-on contract role for an engineer who can work with general independence, make day-to-day technical decisions, and collaborate with product, design, platform, and engineering teams to deliver reliable backend functionality. Enterprise experience strongly preferred. Key Responsibilities - Design, build, and maintain backend services using Java and/or Kotlin, Spring Boot, and Spring Batch or equivalent JVM batch frameworks. - Develop and evolve REST and GraphQL APIs serving internal services and consumer-facing products. - Build and tune batch processing pipelines for data-intensive workflows, including ingestion, enrichment, and scheduled jobs. - Use LLM-assisted coding tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar tools to accelerate development while applying sound engineering judgment to review, validate, and refine generated code. - Analyze tradeoffs across performance, maintainability, reliability, and delivery speed. - Participate in code reviews, on-call rotations, incident response, observability, and continuous service improvement. - Partner with product managers, architects, and fellow engineers to scope work, refine requirements, and deliver against team objectives. ## Qualifications Must-Have Skills - 3+ years of professional backend engineering experience. - Backend development experience with Java as the primary language or Kotlin. - Experience working in Java and comfort working in Kotlin environments or codebases. - Production experience with Spring Boot. - Production experience with Spring Batch or equivalent JVM batch frameworks. - Strong fundamentals in REST API design and implementation. - Hands-on experience building or consuming GraphQL APIs. - Practical experience using LLM-based coding assistants in day-to-day engineering workflows. - Ability to speak credibly about when to trust A

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