Senior Backend Engineer

Location: Manila, Philippines

Work Setup: Hybrid (40% onsite)

We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Backend Engineer to help design, develop, and optimize scalable backend services that power our retail platforms and systems. This position requires strong expertise in Java (8 and above), Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and OOP, along with proven leadership in guiding squads, mentoring engineers, and driving technical excellence.

You will collaborate with squad leads, principal engineers, and cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality backend systems while ensuring best practices, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement.

Delivery

• Support interactions with customers and development teams to gather and define requirements.
• Focus on technology requirements and standards within squads, driving the technical design and evolution of backend services for retail platforms.
• Lead architectural and design discussions to ensure secure, scalable, and reliable solutions.
• Assist squad leads and engineers through ideation, design reviews, build, code review, testing, load testing, and deployment.
• Provide clear objectives to engineers while enabling ownership of system-level architecture.
• Deliver regular reports on technical achievements, challenges, and proposed solutions.
• Help remove blockers and enable efficient delivery.
• Lead and consult on developing maintainable, scalable, and defect-free source code that meets business requirements and team standards.
• Conduct unit test development, complex test scripts, and impact analysis.
• Assist in analyzing and troubleshooting backend application issues.
• Support and facilitate the maintenance and upgrades of existing backend applications.
• Lead troubleshooting and incident management, conduct blameless postmortems, and implement long-term reliability improvements.

Practice & Craftsmanship

• Work with Chapter Leads, Principal Engineers, and Tech Leads to ensure best practices are implemented consistently.
• Identify and implement opportunities for continuous improvement in backend engineering.

Capability Development

• Mentor and coach team members technically and professionally, offering constructive feedback.
• Teach junior engineers through pair programming and code reviews.
• Collaborate with leadership to assess engineer skill levels and identify areas for further learning and development.

Collaboration & Other Responsibilities

• Partner with other teams to ensure end-to-end integration, manage risks, and address cross-organization dependencies.
• Contribute to project planning, prioritization, and completion of assignments.
• Participate in risk assessments, audits, and implementation of recommendations.
• Regularly attend meetings to discuss projects, issues, and ideas.
• Support the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Help set departmental goals and create actionable implementation plans.

• Minimum 5 years' experience in backend development.
• Proven experience mentoring and developing engineering teams.
• Strong skills in software architecture and design to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable backend solutions.
• Deep knowledge of industry-standard development practices, lifecycle processes, and methodologies (Agile experience a plus).
• Skilled in using metrics and data for technical and architectural decision-making.

• Strong expertise in:

• Java (8 and above) – with experience in at least 2 recent versions

• Spring Boot & Spring Framework
• RESTful API Development
• Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
• Code versioning tools (Git, Bitbucket, Subversion)
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills.
• Ability to lead through influence, work under pressure, and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting abilities, capable of diagnosing complex issues independently.
• Self-starter with strong ownership and accountability for deliverables.
• Able to communicate technical details effectively at all levels and understand customer systems.
• Technical skillsets adaptable based on project and area requirements.