Senior Java Engineer

About the role

Epassi is a major European employee benefits technology company used by millions of employers and employees through digital and mobile solutions. The company operates across Finland, Germany, Italy, the UK, France, the Nordics, and other markets, and is hiring a Senior Java Engineer to help build the next generation of its distributed backend platform.

This position is focused on ownership rather than task-by-task delivery. You will help shape backend architecture, improve production reliability, and strengthen the engineering foundation for long-term growth.

What you will do

• Develop and support Java Spring Boot microservices within a domain-driven, bounded-context architecture.
• Build event-driven integrations that support cross-domain communication and eventual consistency.
• Work extensively with PostgreSQL, including schema design, multi-tenant data handling, isolation, and performance tuning.
• Create and maintain REST APIs with versioning, throttling, and API gateway integration.
• Keep engineering standards high through strong testing, performance tuning, and security-minded development, with test coverage above 80% as the baseline.
• Partner with Product, frontend engineers working in React Native, DevOps, and other backend teams across different European markets.
• Contribute to architecture reviews, design discussions, and platform standards through decision records.
• Monitor services in production, investigate consistency issues, and resolve operational incidents using tracing and structured logs.
• Deploy services through CI/CD pipelines and support controlled releases using feature flags.

What success looks like

• You deliver microservices that are production-ready, scalable, and aligned to the intended architecture.
• You own the services you build after release, including stability and operational follow-through.
• You design clear domain boundaries that reduce coupling and make integration clean.
• You proactively tackle technical debt before it grows into a larger problem.
• You communicate well across teams and time zones and are comfortable involving collaborators early.
• You work with a strong build-and-run mindset and are comfortable being accountable for what you ship.

What you should bring

To succeed in this role, you should have substantial backend engineering experience, a strong command of Java and Spring Boot, and hands-on experience building and operating distributed systems in production.

• At least 6 years of professional software development experience, including 3 or more years focused on Java backend engineering at scale.
• Strong knowledge of Java 17+ and Spring Boot, including Spring Data JPA, Spring Security, and Spring Cloud.
• Practical experience designing and working with microservices architectures.
• Working knowledge of domain-driven design concepts such as bounded contexts, aggregates, domain events, and anti-corruption layers.
• Deep experience with PostgreSQL, including schema design, indexing, query tuning, and transaction handling under load.
• Hands-on use of event-driven systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS in production.
• Strong REST API design skills, including OpenAPI/Swagger documentation and rate limiting.
• Testing experience with JUnit, Mockito, integration testing, and contract testing tools such as Pact.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes, including deployment practices and service mesh concepts.
• Exposure to CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab CI.
• Observability experience using structured logging, distributed tracing tools such as Jaeger or Zipkin, and monitoring platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog.
• Practical experimentation with AI or LLM tools applied to real engineering workflows.
• Prior mentoring experience and a track record of helping other engineers improve.

Additional expectations

• English fluency is required.
• You should have delivered and operated microservices from design through deployment, on-call support, and post-mortems.
• You should be able to show concrete improvements in performance, reliability, or scalability from previous work.
• You are expected to contribute to documentation, design decisions, and knowledge sharing.
• You should be comfortable thinking strategically about AI-driven automation and how it can create real engineering value.

Why join Epassi

• Be part of a fast-growing international business with strong momentum and a clear sense of purpose.
• Contribute to a platform that improves everyday wellbeing for people across Europe.
• Work in an open, inclusive environment with low hierarchy and a strong sense of teamwork.
• Join a company that supports both personal and professional development.
• Help shape the future of Europe’s leading employee benefits platform.

Location

This is an onsite role based in Haywards Heath, England, United Kingdom.