Senior Backend Engineer

Role: Senior BackEnd Engineer
Location: Sydney, NSW
Experience: 5+ years
Role type: Permanent

Experience & Skills:

• Experience: 5+ years of backend software engineering experience in a professional environment, with at least 2 years building production microservices.
• Java / Kotlin: Strong proficiency in Java (11+) and the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security). Kotlin experience is a plus but not required.
• API Development: Solid experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs. Understanding of API versioning, error contracts, pagination, and idempotency. gRPC experience is desirable.
• Database: Strong SQL skills and experience with relational databases - PostgreSQL (preferred) or SQL Server. Experience with schema design for transactional systems, query optimisation, indexing strategies, and database migration tooling (Flyway or Liquibase).
• Messaging & Event Streaming: Experience with message brokers - Kafka (preferred) and/or IBM MQ. Understanding of event-driven architecture patterns, consumer groups, schema evolution, and at-least-once delivery guarantees.
• Testing: Proven testing discipline - unit testing (JUnit 5, Mockito), integration testing (Testcontainers), contract testing (Pact or Spring Cloud Contract), and experience building comprehensive test suites for complex business logic.
• Cloud & Containers: Experience with containerised deployments (Docker, Kubernetes). Understanding of cloud-native patterns - service discovery, config management, health checks, graceful shutdown. Experience with AWS or Azure is desirable.
• CI/CD: Experience with CI/CD pipelines - building, testing, and deploying microservices through automated pipelines. Familiarity with trunk-based development or GitFlow branching strategies.
• Version Control: Proficient with Git, Artifactory & Bitbucket - branching, rebasing, pull request workflows, and collaborative development in a multi-team environment.

Desirable Skills

• Python: Working knowledge of Python for scripting, data pipeline tooling, automation, and migration utilities. Not required for core platform development but valuable for supporting tooling and data integration work.
• SWIFT Messaging: Familiarity with SWIFT MT message formats (MT700, MT710, MT720, MT760, MT799, etc.) or willingness to learn. Published specifications are available - domain expertise is not required at hire.
• Trade Finance Domain: Understanding of Trade Finance products (Letters of Credit, Guarantees, Collections, Trade Loans) and regulatory frameworks (UCP 600, ISBP 821,
• URDG 758). Highly valued but not essential - you will work alongside experienced BAs and domain SMEs.
• Financial Services: Experience in banking, financial services, or regulated industries - understanding of audit requirements, data sensitivity, regulatory compliance, and operational risk.
• Legacy Integration: Experience integrating with legacy systems - COBOL-based backends, terminal emulation interfaces, mainframe data extraction, or vendor platforms with limited API surfaces.
• Workflow / State Machines: Experience with workflow engines (Temporal, Camunda) or implementing state machine patterns for long-running business processes. Trade Finance instruments have complex lifecycles spanning weeks to months.
• Rules Engines: Experience with business rules engines (Drools or similar) or implementing complex rule validation logic in application code.