Hiring Java Developers: The Complete Guide

# Java Developer

**Location:** Chicago, IL (Hybrid) · **Employment Type:** Full-time · **Level:** Mid-Senior

## About [Company]

[Company] is building enterprise-grade financial services infrastructure that powers payments and trading platforms. Our Java services process over 10 million transactions daily with 99.99% uptime, serving banks, payment processors, and investment firms across North America.

Our platform handles real-time payment processing, fraud detection, and settlement workflows for 200+ enterprise customers. We've built our core systems on modern Java with Spring Boot, prioritizing reliability, security, and performance at scale.

**Why join [Company]?**

- Build mission-critical Java services processing 10M+ transactions daily
- Join a 80-person engineering team with deep expertise in financial systems
- Series C funded ($75M from Andreessen Horowitz and Goldman Sachs)
- Competitive compensation with meaningful equity

## The Role

We're looking for a Java Developer to join our Core Platform team. You'll build and scale the backend services that power our transaction processing engine—from designing microservices architectures to optimizing Spring Boot applications that handle thousands of requests per second.

The ideal candidate has strong experience with modern Java (17+), understands JVM internals and performance tuning, and enjoys solving complex distributed systems challenges. You'll work closely with our DevOps, security, and product teams to deliver services that financial institutions depend on for critical operations.

## Objectives of This Role

- Build reliable, high-performance Java services that meet financial industry SLAs
- Design and implement microservices architectures using Spring Boot and Spring Cloud
- Improve system performance and maintain our 99.99% uptime target
- Contribute to our event-driven architecture using Kafka and Spring Integration
- Mentor junior engineers on Java best practices, testing patterns, and clean code principles

## Responsibilities

- Design and implement RESTful APIs and gRPC services using Spring Boot 3.x
- Build high-throughput microservices with proper transaction management and error handling
- Develop event-driven workflows using Apache Kafka and Spring Cloud Stream
- Write and optimize PostgreSQL queries, implement caching strategies with Redis
- Profile and tune JVM performance, including garbage collection optimization
- Debug production issues and participate in on-call rotation (1 week every 8 weeks)
- Collaborate with DevOps on containerization, Kubernetes deployment, and CI/CD pipelines
- Write comprehensive tests (unit, integration, and contract tests with JUnit 5 and Mockito)
- Document technical decisions, API contracts, and runbooks for critical services
- Review pull requests and contribute to architectural decision records (ADRs)

## Required Skills and Qualifications

- 4+ years of professional Java development experience
- Deep understanding of Java 17+ features: records, sealed classes, pattern matching, virtual threads
- Expert-level Spring Boot expertise: auto-configuration, dependency injection, Spring Data JPA
- Strong knowledge of JVM internals: memory model, garbage collection, thread management
- Experience designing and building microservices architectures
- Solid understanding of SQL and database design with PostgreSQL or MySQL
- Proficiency with testing frameworks: JUnit 5, Mockito, TestContainers
- Experience with build tools: Maven or Gradle
- Familiarity with message queues, particularly Apache Kafka
- Understanding of RESTful API design principles and best practices
- Comfortable with on-call responsibilities and incident response

## Preferred Skills and Qualifications

- Experience with Spring Cloud for distributed systems patterns (Config, Gateway, Circuit Breaker)
- Background in high-throughput systems processing 10K+ requests per second
- Experience with reactive programming: Project Reactor, Spring WebFlux
- Familiarity with Kubernetes and container orchestration
- Experience with observability tools: Micrometer, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog
- Contributions to open-source Java projects
- Experience with GraalVM native compilation for Spring Boot
- Background in fintech, payments, or trading systems
- Knowledge of security best practices: OAuth 2.0, Spring Security

## Tech Stack

- **Language:** Java 21 LTS (modern features actively used)
- **Framework:** Spring Boot 3.2, Spring Cloud 2023.x
- **Databases:** PostgreSQL 15 (primary) with Hibernate ORM, Redis for caching and sessions
- **Messaging:** Apache Kafka 3.x, Spring Cloud Stream
- **Build:** Gradle 8.x with Kotlin DSL, Maven for legacy services
- **Cloud:** AWS (EKS, RDS, ElastiCache, MSK, S3)
- **CI/CD:** GitHub Actions, Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), ArgoCD
- **Monitoring:** Datadog, PagerDuty, Micrometer with Prometheus
- **Testing:** JUnit 5, Mockito, TestContainers, Gatling for load testing

## Compensation and Benefits

**Salary:** $140,000 - $180,000 (based on experience and location)

**Equity:** 0.02% - 0.08% (4-year vest, 1-year cliff)

**Benefits:**

- Medical, dental, and vision insurance (100% covered for employees, 75% for dependents)
- Unlimited PTO with 15-day minimum encouraged
- $3,000 annual learning and development budget
- $1,500 home office setup allowance
- 401(k) with 5% company match
- 16 weeks paid parental leave
- On-call compensation: $500/week when primary on-call
- Flexible hybrid work (3 days in Chicago office, 2 remote)

## Interview Process

Our interview process typically takes 2-3 weeks. We provide feedback at every stage.

- **Step 1: Recruiter Screen** (30 min) - We'll discuss your background, interests, and answer your questions about the role.

- **Step 2: Technical Screen** (60 min) - A conversation about Java fundamentals, Spring Boot patterns, and past projects with a senior engineer.

- **Step 3: System Design** (60 min) - Design a payment processing service or similar transaction-heavy system with our architects.

- **Step 4: Coding Session** (90 min) - Build a Spring Boot service with proper error handling and tests. No algorithm puzzles—practical Java work.

- **Step 5: Team Interviews** (2 x 30 min) - Meet potential teammates and discuss collaboration and culture fit.

- **Step 6: Hiring Manager** (30 min) - Discuss career goals, growth opportunities, and next steps.

We compensate $250 for take-home exercises over 3 hours.

## How to Apply

Submit your resume and optionally include a link to your GitHub, contributions to Java open-source projects, or technical blog posts. We review every application and respond within 5 business days.

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*[Company] is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We encourage applications from candidates who may not meet 100% of the qualifications—research shows underrepresented groups are less likely to apply unless they meet every requirement.*