Principal Back End Engineer (Java)

Join Our Team as a Principal Back End Engineer at Modus Create!

About us:

Founded in 2011, Modus is a global, fully remote team of world-class technologists who thrive in a collaborative, innovative environment. We’re a digital product engineering partner for forward-thinking businesses. Our global teams work side-by-side with clients to design, build, and scale custom solutions that achieve real results and lasting change, partnering with industry leaders including AWS, GitHub, and Atlassian.

We were fully remote before it was cool! Recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies for nine years and a top remote work company by FlexJobs, we have helped some of the world’s largest brands deliver powerful digital experiences.

As an award-winning Atlassian partner with a world-class team, we help organizations innovate and solve complex challenges for Fortune 500 companies and beyond, we want to hear from you.

Opportunity!

Modus Create is seeking a Principal Java Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of complex, high-performance backend systems. You'll own greenfield Spring Framework components from architecture through production, setting technical direction for the engineering team while staying hands-on with critical implementation work. This is a role for a deeply experienced Java architect who can navigate ambiguity, mentor engineers, and deliver production-grade systems that handle extreme scale and throughput demands. You'll be a technical leader within the Software Engineering team—not stepping away from code, but multiplying your impact through architecture, mentorship, and decisions that shape how we build. You'll work alongside experienced engineers who respect technical rigor, and you'll be expected to challenge decisions and raise architectural concerns with confidence. 

Requirements:

• 10+ years professional Java development with deep, hands-on experience across the full platform stack
• Expert-level knowledge of the Spring Framework ecosystem (Spring Core, Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Cloud) with experience architecting large-scale applications using these libraries
• Proven track record designing and building greenfield Spring applications that handle high request volumes and extreme throughput; not just maintenance work, but architecture from the ground up
• JVM expertise: configuration, tuning, garbage collection, memory management, and performance optimization in production systems
• Experience designing and implementing robust API integrations including OAuth 2.0, error handling strategies, retry logic, progressive backoff, and circuit breaker patterns
• Experience creating AI-powered applications, integrating with AI tools and services, or creating or using MCP servers
• Hands-on cloud platform experience—deploying, configuring, troubleshooting, and optimizing applications in production cloud environments - Demonstrated mentorship of engineers; ability to elevate team technical capability through code review, pairing, and guidance
• Strong collaborative mindset; comfortable operating in flat team structures and advocating for technical decisions without requiring process scaffolding
• Experienced using AI-assisted coding tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) with human-in-the-loop best practices; able to leverage AI for accelerated delivery while maintaining code quality, security, and architectural integrity
• Track record of shipping production systems; able to balance architectural ideals with delivery constraints and business timeline 

Responsibilities:

• Design and architect complex Spring Framework components for greenfield systems; make trade-off decisions balancing performance, maintainability, scalability, and time-to-delivery
• Own end-to-end delivery of critical backend features, including implementation, testing, performance validation, and production support
• Research and evaluate emerging Java and Spring Framework technologies; prototype new patterns and tools and recommend adoption when justified
• Implement best practices for high-load systems: API gateway patterns, resilient integrations, efficient database access, caching strategies, and observability
• Conduct technical design reviews with engineering peers; identify architectural risks and propose solutions
• Mentor engineers through code review, pair programming, and technical guidance; model problem-solving approaches and engineering discipline
• Contribute to team standards: code quality, testing practices, deployment patterns, documentation; lead by example rather than policy 

You’ll Love:

• Architecting systems that scale; owning the decisions that let an application handle 10x load without falling over
• Solving hard problems in Spring and the JVM; diving deep into performance bottlenecks, concurrency issues, and integration challenges
• Mentoring engineers and watching them grow; knowing that your guidance directly improved their capabilities and career trajectory
• Building clean, maintainable code that teams will want to own and evolve; seeing your architectural choices simplify future work
• Exploring emerging technologies (Spring AI, MCP servers, new JVM runtimes) and deciding when they're worth adopting versus when they're noise 

What Success Looks Like:

• You've shipped at least one greenfield Spring application that handles production traffic at significant scale (hundreds of requests per second, petabyte-class data volumes, or equivalent complexity)
• Engineers on your team can articulate the architectural decisions behind the systems you've built and why those decisions were made
• Your code reviews result in better code and better engineers; reviewees understand not just what to change, but why 
• Your team ships faster and with higher confidence because they have clearer architectural patterns and fewer re-do cycles 
• You've successfully integrated third-party APIs at scale; your error handling and resilience patterns have proven themselves under real failure conditions 

By joining our team, you’ll be part of a winning squad that plays to each other’s strengths and celebrates every success together. Apply now and show us you’ve got what it takes to take your consulting skills to the next level with Modus Create!