Senior Software Development Engineer

Job description / Role

Overview

This role is for one of Weekday’s clients.

Min experience: 9+ years

Location: Abu Dhabi

Job type: Full-time

We are looking for a highly experienced SDE-3 / Senior Software Development Engineer with 9–14 years of software engineering experience to design, develop, and scale high-performance backend systems. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot, with a proven track record of building reliable, scalable, and maintainable applications in production environments.

As an SDE-3, you will take ownership of complex technical initiatives, contribute to system architecture and engineering best practices, and work closely with product, engineering, and other cross-functional teams. This role requires strong technical judgment, problem-solving ability, and the ability to drive projects from design through deployment.

Requirements

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain scalable backend services and applications using Java and Spring Boot.
• Architect and implement robust, secure, and high-performance APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Own complex engineering projects from requirements gathering and technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
• Analyze system performance, identify bottlenecks, and implement solutions to improve scalability, reliability, latency, and resource utilization.
• Develop clean, modular, reusable, and maintainable code following established engineering standards and design principles.
• Design and optimize database interactions, APIs, service integrations, and backend workflows.
• Participate in architecture discussions and contribute to technical decisions involving scalability, reliability, observability, and maintainability.
• Conduct thorough code reviews and promote high standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and engineering practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and perform root-cause analysis to ensure long-term resolution.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, QA engineers, DevOps, and other stakeholders to deliver high-quality software solutions.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and contribute to improving the overall technical capabilities of the team.
• Drive engineering initiatives and continuously identify opportunities to improve development processes, system architecture, and operational efficiency.

Must-have skills

• 9–14 years of professional software development experience.
• Strong proficiency in Java, including object-oriented programming, collections, concurrency, exception handling, and performance optimization.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Spring Boot and the Spring ecosystem.
• Strong experience building and maintaining RESTful APIs and microservices.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, backend architecture, scalability, and high-availability concepts.
• Strong knowledge of software design principles, design patterns, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases and database performance optimization.
• Strong understanding of unit testing, integration testing, debugging, and code quality practices.
• Experience working with Git and modern software development and deployment practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to independently handle complex technical challenges.

Good-to-have skills

• Experience in team management, technical leadership, or engineering mentorship.
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.
• Familiarity with Kafka or other event-driven/messaging systems.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, and production reliability practices.
• Exposure to system design interviews, technical architecture reviews, and large-scale application development.

What we’re looking for

The ideal candidate is a strong hands-on engineer who combines deep technical expertise with ownership and leadership capabilities. You should be comfortable solving ambiguous problems, making sound architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and delivering reliable software at scale.

Experience: 9–14 years

Primary skills: Java, Spring Boot

Good-to-have: Team management