Head of Backend Development

Job Description

Industry: Food and Beverage Services
Seniority for this role: Director
Your responsibilities Technical Leadership: Define and oversee backend architecture strategies, with a focus on distributed systems, microservices, and cloud based development on any of platforms GCP(primary), AWS and Azure, targeting both immediate performance and long-term scalability. Executive Communication and Collaboration: Partner closely with product development teams, tribe leads, and product owners to translate technical objectives into scalable, business-aligned solutions. Actively contribute to prioritizing and defining technical requirements that support efficient, robust development. DORA Metrics Accountability: Drive improvements in DORA metrics—Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)—to optimize backend team performance, deployment speed, and system resilience. Domain Expertise: In-depth experience with Java and distributed, high-throughput systems. Proven ability to optimize backend frameworks (e.g., Spring Boot) and leverage GCP infrastructure for scalability and reliability. Mentorship and Team Development: Lead, mentor, and support engineering managers and senior engineers, fostering a growth-oriented culture focused on technical depth, quality, and strategic alignment within backend teams. Participation in technical roadmap development and efficient resources allocation and optimization. Lead cross-functional efforts to resolve high-stakes, organization-wide technical challenges, implementing scalable solutions that improve SDLC efficiency and long-term system reliability. Proactively address roadblocks across engineering teams to deliver impactful solutions aligned with organizational goals and timelines, ensuring seamless delivery of critical initiatives. Partner with leadership to identify opportunities for innovation, scalability, and cost optimization, translating them into actionable technical strategies that deliver business value. Your experience 10+ years in backend engineering leadership with expertise in distributed Java systems, GCP (primary) or AWS or Azure, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, and microservices. Demonstrated success in driving DORA metrics improvement and optimizing for high availability and low-latency systems. A proactive, solution-focused leader with CI/CD experience and an agile approach to managing technical debt. Exceptional communication skills to influence cross-functionally and drive product and engineering alignment. B2-level English required. Computer science or related field degree preferred. KPI System Performance and Uptime: Maintain 99.95%+ availability, ensuring backend systems are optimized for high load and reduced latency. DORA Metrics Performance: Achieve industry-standard or better performance in Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and MTTR. Scalability and Efficiency: Deliver scalable backend designs on GCP infrastructure, meeting established performance and reliability targets. Technical Quality: Ensure 85%+ test code coverage on critical services, adherence to coding standards, and minimize critical incidents. Delivery and Reporting: Meet timely delivery of backend features, maintain accurate JIRA reporting, and align with quarterly goals Show more Show less