Lead/Tech Lead Java Engineer

Role overview

Lead the design and delivery of scalable backend systems for a social gaming product, combining hands-on Java engineering with technical leadership. You will guide architecture and engineering practices, support team members, and take ownership of reliability and performance in a high-volume environment. The engineering culture incorporates AI tools throughout design, implementation, testing and review, while engineers remain accountable for technical decisions.

Responsibilities

- Design, document and implement complex system architectures, and mentor engineers. - Lead code reviews and establish practices that support consistent, high-quality delivery. - Improve relational database performance, particularly through PostgreSQL design and query tuning. - Build and maintain messaging systems for high-volume data flows, using Kafka or comparable tools. - Investigate production issues and own improvements to system reliability and performance. - Facilitate technical discussions and collaborative problem-solving across teams.

Requirements

- Extensive production experience with Java and a deep understanding of the JVM ecosystem. - Strong system design skills, including documenting complex architectures. - Advanced relational database knowledge and PostgreSQL performance tuning experience. - Understanding of messaging systems; Kafka experience is preferred. - Strong troubleshooting skills and knowledge of concurrency and security practices. - Experience mentoring engineers and upper-intermediate English for stakeholder communication. - Comfort using AI as part of engineering workflows, with sound judgment and ownership of resulting work.

Nice to have

- Experience with cloud-native systems and tools such as Kubernetes, distributed databases, caching, automated delivery pipelines or observability platforms. - Familiarity with performance testing and automated integration testing.

Benefits and work setup

- Fully remote work. - Paid vacation, sick leave and public holidays. - Company events and opportunities for professional development.