Java Backend Engineer - IBM MQ, Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ
Vancouver BC
Long Term Contract
Key Responsibilities
Design, implement, and optimize backend services handling high-volume data flows with strict performance and reliability requirements.
Develop Java-based components using modern frameworks (Spring/Spring Boot or equivalent).
Build and maintain asynchronous and event-driven workflows using messaging systems such as MQ/Kafka/RabbitMQ.
Implement performance tuning, profiling, and observability to support sub-second latency and 99.99% availability goals.
Drive solutioning and system designs for new features, integrations, and plat-form enhancements across distributed systems.
Ensure service robustness through automated testing (unit, integration, load tests) and CI/CD workflows.
Apply secure-by-design principles, including threat modeling, safe data handling, API hardening, and least-privilege access.
Implement and support authentication and authorization patterns (e.g., OAuth2, mTLS, JWT, service-to-service auth).
Participate in architecture reviews, offering technical leadership and mentor-ship to junior engineers.
Diagnose and resolve complex production issues across infrastructure, code, and messaging layers.
Enhance platform reliability via improved logging, monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling
*
Required Qualifications
5+ years of hands-on backend development experience in large-scale, high-throughput environments.
Strong proficiency in Java (Java 8+, multithreading, concurrency libraries, performance optimization).
Solid understanding of Linux fundamentals (filesystem, networking basics, shell operations, performance tools).
Extensive experience with Message Queue systems (IBM MQ, Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc.).
Deep knowledge of asynchronous programming, non-blocking IO patterns, and event-driven system design.
Good understanding of modern network protocols, including:
gRPC (service-to-service communication, protobuf, streaming patterns)
HTTP/2 (multiplexing, header compression, flow control, performance benefits)
Experience implementing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tooling, including:
Jenkins
Chef Infra / Chef Habitat
Terraform
PCF CLI
Demonstrated ability to design scalable system architectures and evaluate de-sign trade-offs.
Basic understanding of Authentication/Authorization concepts and secure communication patterns.
Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) is an asset.
Excellent debugging, problem-solving, and performance-profiling skills.
________________________________________
Preferred Qualifications
Experience in financial services, real-time scoring, risk systems, or other low-latency domains.
Exposure to observability stacks (Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
Knowledge of DevOps practices, automation, and additional IaC tools.
Hands-on understanding of reliability engineering (circuit breakers, retries, backpressure, failover strategies).
Ability to lead complex technical initiatives and drive cross-team alignment.
Job Type: Fixed term contract