SmartCat is an AI-driven company that works on hard data problems. We're selective about the projects we take on, and we care that the work actually matters.

About the role

We're looking for a backend engineer, Medior or Senior, to help build and run large event-driven systems that have to stay reliable under heavy load. Most of the work is microservices that move a lot of data around. As a Medior you'll work closely with the more experienced people on the team; as a Senior you'll lead the design decisions and help others level up.

What you'll do

• Build and run microservices that handle large volumes of data.
• Connect services with Kafka and Avro, and keep the schema contracts between them clean.
• Work with different data storage (Cassandra, ElasticSearch, Postgress, Redis….) and handle schema changes without breaking things.
• Keep services observable, and take the manual work out of testing and deployment.
• As a Senior: own the architecture decisions and mentor the rest of the team.

What we're looking for

• 3+ years for Medior, 5+ for Senior, mostly with Java and Spring Boot. Python or Go is a plus.
• You've built distributed systems and are comfortable with microservices and event-driven design.
• Hands-on with Kafka (Kafka Streams is a plus) and Avro with a schema registry.
• Good with PostgreSQL and SQL. Experience with jOOQ, Flyway, or reactive access (R2DBC / Project Reactor) is a real plus.
• You care whether things work in production: metrics, tracing and logging (we use OpenTelemetry, Micrometer and Prometheus), and fallback patterns like Resilience4j.
• You know Docker and Kubernetes. We run on-prem and on OCI; cloud experience (AWS, Azure, GCP) is welcome too.
• Security matters to you. Pen testing or red-team experience is a big plus.
• You write tests, unit and integration (we use Testcontainers).
• Nice if you've worked with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch, Redis, or Spring Cloud.
• You like figuring things out and trying different approaches.
• You ask for help when you're stuck. We work as a team.
• If you're into ML or LLMs that's a nice bonus (we're an AI-driven company), but it's not what this role is about.

What we offer

• Clearly defined pay grades: from L1 (talented junior) to L10 (principal)
• The career path that connects these grades, so you know where you're headed (at least here with us)
• Loyalty coefficient: 10% on net compensation after 3 years at SmartCat, 20% after 5 years
• Knowledge budget
• Flexible hours and work from home
• We're transparent, from L-levels to salaries, strategy and financials
• Full support as you build up your expertise