Weekend Backend Engineer

About the Role
This role combines platform engineering and structured first-line operational responsibility .
You will work within Central Engineering, building and improving our internal developer platform - focusing on observability, load testing, resiliency, and system robustness - while also participating in a defined Level 1 incident duty rotation.
Our systems handle millions of requests daily across distributed microservices. Stability, scalability, and performance are critical. This role directly contributes to improving reliability at scale, not just feature delivery.
You will work in a structured regional shift pattern to help provide 24/7 coverage as part of our first-line response model.
Our Stack (experience in some is expected)

- Language: Java 21

- Frameworks: Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Cloud

- Architecture: Microservices, REST APIs, Event-Driven Systems

- Databases: MySQL, MyBatis, ShardingSphere, MongoDB

- Caching: Redis (AWS ElastiCache), Elasticsearch

- Messaging: RocketMQ

- Cloud/Infra: Docker, Kubernetes, AWS

- Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, CloudWatch
What You’ll Be Doing
Platform Engineering (Primary Focus Outside Duty Window)

- Improve observability across services (metrics, tracing, logging).

- Design and enhance load testing frameworks and resiliency tooling.

- Build reusable platform capabilities and internal libraries.

- Identify recurring operational pain points and eliminate them permanently.

- Contribute to standards that improve scalability and maintainability.

- Participate in architecture discussions and technical reviews.
Level 1 Operational Duty (During Assigned Shift Window)

- Participate in a defined regional shift pattern.

- Provide first-line incident response within your duty window.

- Triage alerts via Rootly and structured runbooks.

- Execute pre-approved mitigation steps.

- Escalate to product teams when required.

- Ensure clear documentation and handover between shifts.
This role does not own product incident resolution, but ensures structured and rapid triage.
What You’ll Bring

- 3+ years experience in backend engineering (Java/Spring preferred).

- Experience operating high-throughput production systems.

- Strong understanding of distributed systems and failure modes.

- Experience with observability tools and production diagnostics.

- Understanding of load testing and performance tuning.

- Strong SQL proficiency.

- Experience with containerised/cloud environments (Docker/K8s/AWS).

- Ability to work autonomously and follow structured operational protocols.

- Clear written and verbal communication skills in English.
Preferred:

- Experience building shared internal tooling or platform libraries.

- Experience participating in on-call or incident response rotations.
Working Pattern

- This role operates within a defined regional shift structure to support 24/7 coverage. This is shift-based coverage during working hours (not overnight pager callouts).

- Engineers are expected to be available for rapid response during their assigned duty window.

- Exact shift hours and rotation details will be discussed during the interview process.