Lead Java Engineer

Location: Bulgaria, Poland, or Romania; remote or office-based

Company

hirify.global delivers software engineering services for a European public sector organization working in competition policy.

What you will do

• Design, develop, and maintain Java and Spring back-end services, business logic, and data access layers.
• Take technical ownership of service correctness, error handling, performance, security, and production operation.
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews, knowledge sharing, stakeholder discussions, and solution design.
• Design, secure, and document SOAP and REST APIs with OpenAPI/Swagger and authentication mechanisms.
• Optimize relational and document data structures, SQL queries, Elasticsearch search capabilities, and performance.
• Build Kafka-based event-driven integrations and investigate complex back-end issues with APM and observability tools.

Requirements

• Master’s degree or five years of higher education, with at least 15 years of professional IT and software development experience.
• At least 15 years of Java and Spring Framework experience, with knowledge of PHP, Spring Boot, Hibernate, and Node.js.
• At least 10 years of SOAP Web Services experience and at least 5 years of REST API development, including API security and OpenAPI/Swagger documentation.
• At least 3 years of experience with Elasticsearch and Apache Kafka, plus SQL and NoSQL database design and performance trade-offs.
• Experience with Agile, Git, SVN, Docker, Kubernetes, APM tools, OpenTelemetry, case management tools, and competition policy.
• Eligibility for a personal national-level security clearance equivalent to EUCI SECRET UE/EU SECRET is required. English at B2 or higher is required.

Nice to have

• French language knowledge.
• AWS Certified Developer Associate, Microsoft Azure Developer Associate, CKAD, or equivalent certification.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote or office-based work in Bulgaria, Poland, or Romania.
• Collaboration in an international and multicultural environment.
• Participation in multilingual stakeholder meetings.
• Work involving sensitive non-classified or EU Classified Information, with discretion and adherence to security rules.