Senior Java/Kotlin Developer

Senior Java/Kotlin Developer
Work Type: Onsite
Location: Minneapolis, MN

We are looking for a highly capable Senior Software Developer / Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in both Java and Kotlin. The candidate should be capable of independently taking an idea or business problem from concept through architecture, development, deployment, and production support.
This role requires a strong engineering ownership mindset. The developer should be comfortable working independently with little to no technical supervision and should have experience building and maintaining scalable, production-grade applications.

Must-Have Skills
Java & Kotlin

• Strong hands-on development experience in both Java and Kotlin is mandatory.
• Ability to design, develop, test, troubleshoot, and optimize production-grade applications using Java and Kotlin.
• Strong understanding of modern backend development practices, object-oriented programming, APIs, concurrency, performance, and application design patterns.

Architecture & System Design

• Strong understanding of application and system architecture.
• Ability to understand existing architectures and independently contribute to architectural and technical design decisions.
• Experience with distributed systems, APIs, microservices, integration patterns, scalability, resiliency, security, and performance.
• Ability to evaluate technical trade-offs and recommend appropriate solutions.

PostgreSQL

• Strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL.
• Experience with relational data modeling, schema design, SQL development, indexing, query optimization, transaction management, and database performance.
• Ability to troubleshoot application and database performance issues.

End-to-End Product Engineering

• Ability to take a business idea or problem statement and translate it into a complete technical solution.
• Capable of performing idea mapping → requirements → technical design → architecture → development → testing → deployment → production support.
• Ability to break ambiguous requirements into actionable technical deliverables.
• Strong ownership of the complete software development lifecycle rather than focusing only on coding assigned requirements.

CI/CD & DevOps

• Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with automated builds, testing, code-quality checks, deployment automation, environment management, and release processes.
• Ability to troubleshoot and improve build and deployment pipelines.

Production Engineering & Scalability

• Experience deploying, managing, maintaining, and supporting applications at scale.
• Strong understanding of monitoring, logging, alerting, observability, resiliency, and high availability.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex production issues and perform root-cause analysis.
• Experience identifying and addressing application performance and scalability bottlenecks.

Independent Execution & Ownership

• Must be capable of working independently with little to no day-to-day technical support.
• Able to make sound engineering decisions and proactively identify dependencies, risks, and technical challenges.
• Takes accountability for delivery as well as the long-term reliability, maintainability, and operational health of applications.

Good-to-Have Skills
Python

• Working knowledge or hands-on development experience with Python is preferred.
• Experience using Python for automation, scripting, data processing, tooling, integrations, or supporting backend services would be an advantage.

Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate is a senior, self-driven product engineer who combines strong Java and Kotlin development expertise with architectural thinking, database knowledge, DevOps capabilities, and production ownership.

This individual should not require detailed implementation instructions. Given an idea, business requirement, or desired outcome, they should be able to determine what needs to be built, how it should be architected, how it should be implemented, how it should be deployed, how it will scale, and how it will be maintained in production.

Mandatory technology requirement: Candidates must have strong hands-on experience with both Java and Kotlin. Candidates with Java experience but limited or no Kotlin experience, or vice versa, should not be considered a match for this requirement. Python is a good-to-have skill and is not a substitute for either Java or Kotlin.