Principal Engineer (Java)

TL;DR

Principal Engineer (Java): Building and optimizing high-scale backend services for a global ticket marketplace with an accent on distributed systems, real-time data flow, and extreme traffic resilience. Focus on designing event-driven architectures, modernizing legacy platforms, and solving complex concurrency and latency challenges under heavy load.

Location: Must be based in the United Kingdom

Company

hirify.global is the world’s largest live entertainment company, connecting millions of fans to live events through its leading marketplace, Ticketmaster.

What you will do

• Design and implement high-availability, event-driven systems capable of handling massive traffic spikes during high-demand on-sales.
• Lead platform modernization initiatives, migrating legacy services to cloud-native, microservice-based architectures.
• Collaborate across multiple teams to solve cross-cutting architectural problems and evolve engineering standards.
• Champion resilience patterns including circuit breakers, graceful degradation, and auto-scaling strategies.
• Drive observability improvements to ensure rapid incident response and system reliability.
• Apply AI and machine learning tools to enhance developer productivity and system capabilities.

Requirements

• Must be based in the United Kingdom
• Expertise in Java 17+ and JVM internals, including performance tuning under load.
• Proven experience building high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of event-driven architecture and stream processing (e.g., Kafka, Flink).
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native operations (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform).
• Strong understanding of gRPC, binary serialization, and microservice design patterns.

Culture & Benefits

• Inclusive and diverse work environment committed to authenticity and equal opportunity.
• Focus on professional development and learning from talented global teams.
• Commitment to work-life balance and supporting personal aspirations.
• Opportunity to work on large-scale systems that power global live entertainment.