Back End Developer at Riverbank Solutions

• We are looking for a Backend Engineer to join our growing software development team. In this role, you will design, build, and maintain the backend services that power our digital products and internal platforms-serving millions of customers and processing high volumes of transactions daily.
• You will work primarily with Java and Go, and collaborate closely with frontend engineers, platform/infrastructure teams, architects, and product owners to deliver secure, high-performance, and maintainable services. The ideal candidate brings strong fundamentals in distributed systems, a bias for clean code, and a genuine interest in solving complex problems at scale within a regulated financial services environment.

• Design, develop, test, and maintain backend services and RESTful/gRPC APIs that are secure, performant, and well-documented
• Build and evolve microservices using Java (Spring Boot) and Go, following domain-driven design and clean architecture principles
• Implement event-driven workflows using message brokers (Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ) for asynchronous processing, notifications, and system integration
• Write clean, reusable, and well-tested code with meaningful unit, integration, and contract tests
• Translate business and user requirements into well-structured technical solutions, contributing to design documents and architecture decision records (ADRs)
• Data & Integration
• Design and optimize relational database schemas (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and work with ORMs such as Hibernate/JPA
• Implement caching strategies using Redis to improve response times and reduce database load
• Integrate with third-party systems and payment gateways (M-PESA, card networks, SWIFT) via REST APIs, SOAP, and messaging protocols
• Work with data serialization formats including JSON, XML, Protocol Buffers, and Avro for inter-service communication
• Quality & DevOps
• Conduct thorough code reviews, providing constructive feedback to maintain code quality and consistency across the team
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) for automated testing, building, and deployment
• Containerize services using Docker and deploy to orchestrated environments (Kubernetes/EKS)
• Implement structured logging, metrics, and distributed tracing (ELK Stack, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger) for observability and debugging in production
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response, conducting root cause analysis and implementing preventive measures
• Security & Compliance
• Implement authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth 2.0, JWT, OpenID Connect) following security best practices
• Apply secure coding practices aligned with OWASP guidelines and participate in security reviews
• Ensure services comply with internal architecture standards, audit requirements, and regulatory guidelines applicable to financial services
• Collaboration & Growth
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams-frontend, QA, DevOps, architecture, product-in Agile/Scrum ceremonies (sprint planning, standups, retrospectives)
• Mentor junior developers and contribute to internal knowledge-sharing through documentation, tech talks, and pair programming
• Stay current with industry trends and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and patterns that could improve team productivity and system quality

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field
• Minimum 3 years of professional experience in backend software development with production systems
• Demonstrated experience building and maintaining services in a microservices or service-oriented architecture
• Technical Competencies

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