Java- Techlead

About the role:

We are looking for a Backend Engineer to join a mature, scaled product platform that is already serving business-critical workflows. This role focuses on enhancing existing backend systems, improving reliability, performance, and scalability, and building new features on top of a well-established architecture.

The ideal candidate is strong at writing production-quality code, debugging complex distributed systems, and knowledgeable about how design decisions impact scalability, availability, and long-term maintainability. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure the platform continues to perform reliably at scale while evolving with business needs.

What you will be expected to do:

• Develop, enhance, and maintain backend services for existing user, inventory, pricing, order, and payment management systems running at scale.
• Write clean, efficient, and highly reliable code using Java 8 and above and Spring Boot 2.7 and above.
• Own and improve production systems with a strong focus on performance, scalability, availability, and fault tolerance.
• Debug and resolve complex production issues involving services, databases, caches, and messaging systems.
• Contribute to low-level design (LLD) and actively participate in high-level architecture (HLD) discussions for new features and system improvements.
• Work with event-driven and asynchronous architectures, ensuring correctness and reliability of data flows.
• Optimize database schemas, queries, indexing strategies, and caching layers for high-throughput workloads.
• Partner with DevOps, QA, and Product teams to support smooth 24×7 production operations.
• Participate in code reviews, design reviews, and incident post-mortems to continuously improve system quality.
• Take end-to-end ownership of backend components, from design and implementation to deployment and production support.

You might be a strong candidate if you have/are:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience building and maintaining backend systems in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Java with hands-on experience in Spring Boot–based microservices.
• Solid knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and backend problem solving.
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL or other relational databases in high-scale systems.
• Experience building and consuming RESTful APIs and working with asynchronous systems.
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills in live production systems.
• Good understanding of software engineering best practices, including testing, code reviews, CI/CD, and release management.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to partner effectively within a team.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka or similar messaging/event-streaming platforms.
• Exposure to distributed systems, microservices architecture, and scaling strategies.

Good to have:

• Experience using Redis, Elasticsearch, and MongoDB in production systems.
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience participating in on-call rotations and handling production incidents.

What Sun King offers:

• Professional growth in a dynamic, rapidly expanding, high-social-impact industry
• An open-minded, collaborative culture made up of enthusiastic colleagues who are driven by the challenge of innovation towards profound impact on people and the planet.
• A truly multicultural experience: you will have the chance to work with and learn from people from different geographies, nationalities, and backgrounds.
• Structured, tailored learning and development programs that help you become a better leader, manager, and professional through the Sun King Center for Leadership.

About Sun King

Sun King is a leading off-grid solar energy company providing affordable, reliable electricity to 1.8 billion people without grid access. Operating across Africa and Asia, Sun King has connected over 20 million homes, adding 200,000 homes monthly.

Through a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, customers make small daily payments (as low as $0.11) via mobile money or cash, eventually owning their solar equipment and saving on costly kerosene or diesel. To date, Sun King products have saved customers over $4 billion.

With 28,000 field agents and embedded electronics that regulate usage based on payments, Sun King ensures seamless energy access. Its products range from home lighting and phone charging systems to solar inverters capable of powering high-energy appliances.

Sun King is expanding into clean cooking, electric mobility, and entertainment while serving a wide range of income segments.

The company employs 2,800 staff across 12 countries, with women representing 44% of the workforce, and expertise spanning product design, data science, logistics, sales, software, and operations.

Strong written/verbal communication skills

·       Minimum 5+ Years of Core Java Programming with Collections Framework, Concurrent Programming, Multi-threading (Good knowledge in Executor service, Fork joins pool and other threading concepts)

·       Good knowledge of the JVM with an understanding of performance and memory optimization.

·       Extensive and expert programming experience in JAVA programming language (strong OO skills preferred).

·       Excellent knowledge on collections like, Array List, Vector, LinkedList, HashMap, Hash Table, HashSet is mandate.

·       Exercised exemplary development practices including design specification, coding standards, unit testing, and code-reviews.

·       Expert level understanding of Object-Oriented Concepts and Data Structures

·       Good experience in Database (Sybase, Oracle or SQL Server) like indexing (clustered, non-clustered), hashing, segmenting, data types like clob / blob, views (materialized), replication, constraints, functions, triggers, procedures etc.

What You will do

● Create beautiful software experiences for our clients using design thinking, lean and agile methodology.

● Work on software products designed from scratch using the latest cutting edge technologies, platforms and languages such as JAVA, python, Javascript, GoLang and Scala.

● Work in a dynamic, collaborative, transparent, non-hierarchical culture.

● Work in collaborative, fast-paced and value-driven teams to build innovative customer experiences for our clients.

● Help to grow the next generation of developers and have a positive impact on the industry.

Basic Qualifications

● Experience: 4+ years.

● Hands-on development experience with a broad mix of languages such as JAVA, Python, Javascript etc.

● Server-side development experience mainly in JAVA, (Python and nodeJS can be considerable)

● UI development experience in ReactJS or AngularJS or PolymerJS or EmberJS or Jquery etc. are good to have.

● Passion for software engineering and follow the best coding concepts. ● Good to great problem solving and communication skills.

Nice to have Qualifications

● Product and customer-centric mindset.

● Great OO skills, including design patterns.

● Experience with devops, continuous integration & deployment.

● Exposure to big data technologies, Machine Learning and NLP will be a plus.

Benefits

● Competitive salary.

● Work from anywhere.

● Learning and gaining experience rapidly.

● Reimbursement for basic working set up at home.

● Insurance (including a top up insurance for COVID).

Location

Remote - work from anywhere

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• 2-7 Years of Experience
• Expertise in software design and development
• Proficiency with at least one Object Oriented language (e.g. Java)
• Have knowledge about Computer Science fundamentals in object-oriented design, data structures, algorithm design, problem-solving, and complexity analysis
• A strong track record of project delivery for large, cross-functional projects
• Experience with building high-performance, highly available and scalable distributed systems
• Experience with API Design, ability to architect and implement an intuitive customer and third-party integration story
• Ability to think and analyse both breadthwise (client, server, DB, control flow) and depth-wise (threads, sessions, space-time complexity) while designing and implementing services

Candidates should have worked with Startups (IT Product Firms)

Should be from B2C Firms/Product/SaaS Firms

Key Skills: Python, Golang, Java, Distributed Systems, Cloud, Microservices Architecture, MVC, Design Patterns, Data Structure, Algorithms

Your Experience Across The Years in the Roles You’ve Played

• 6+ years of technology experience (at least 2 years in direct engineering management)
• Managing a 5-15 member engineering team in an agile product org
• Track record of collaborative working with multiple stakeholders
• Planning and analysis with effective communication skills

You’ll Be Improving & Responsible For

• Our products engineering team that works on initiatives fuelling the growth of our recent health retail insurance products
• Collaboration across cross-functional stakeholders to ensure delivery timelines are met
• Implementing product engineering best practices, and evangelizing them within the org
• Engineering management with a strong sense of ownership
• Problem solving with a clear and analytical approach and organized work habits
• Technological innovation in agile product engineering scenarios
• Product and business management principles and metrics