Backend Java Engineer – Kafka / Distributed Systems

Backend Java Engineer – Kafka / Distributed Systems 

Location: Vancouver, BC - Hybrid (3 Days WFO)

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize backend services handling high-volume data flows with strict performance and reliability requirements.
• Develop Java-based components using modern frameworks (Spring/Spring Boot or equivalent).
• Build and maintain asynchronous and event-driven workflows using messaging systems such as MQ/Kafka/RabbitMQ.
• Implement performance tuning, profiling, and observability to support sub-second latency and 99.99% availability goals.
• Drive solutioning and system designs for new features, integrations, and platform enhancements across distributed systems.
• Ensure service robustness through automated testing (unit, integration, load tests) and CI/CD workflows.
• Apply secure-by-design principles, including threat modeling, safe data handling, API hardening, and least-privilege access.
• Implement and support authentication and authorization patterns (e.g., OAuth2, mTLS, JWT, service-to-service auth).
• Participate in architecture reviews, offering technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers.
• Diagnose and resolve complex production issues across infrastructure, code, and messaging layers.
• Enhance platform reliability via improved logging, monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on backend development experience in large-scale, high-throughput environments.
• Strong proficiency in Java (Java 8+, multithreading, concurrency libraries, performance optimization).
• Solid understanding of Linux fundamentals (filesystem, networking basics, shell operations, performance tools).
• Extensive experience with Message Queue systems (IBM MQ, Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc.).
• Deep knowledge of asynchronous programming, non-blocking IO patterns, and event-driven system design.
• Good understanding of modern network protocols, including:
• gRPC (service-to-service communication, protobuf, streaming patterns)
• HTTP/2 (multiplexing, header compression, flow control, performance benefits)
• Experience implementing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tooling, including:
• Jenkins
• Chef Infra / Chef Habitat
• Terraform
• PCF CLI
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable system architectures and evaluate design trade-offs.
• Basic understanding of Authentication/Authorization concepts and secure communication patterns.
• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) is an asset.
• Excellent debugging, problem-solving, and performance-profiling skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in financial services, real-time scoring, risk systems, or other low-latency domains.
• Exposure to observability stacks (Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• Knowledge of DevOps practices, automation, and additional IaC tools.
• Hands-on understanding of reliability engineering (circuit breakers, retries, backpressure, failover strategies).
• Ability to lead complex technical initiatives and drive cross-team alignment.

What We Look For

• A strong ownership mindset with a passion for delivering secure, high-quality, and resilient services.
• Ability to influence architecture, mentor engineers, and uplift engineering standards.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.