Freelance Java Backend Developer Jobs in Tennessee

Position Description:
Summit Professional Education (http://summit-education.com) is the national leader in providing high quality exam prep, continuing education, and certifications for personal trainers, rehab therapists (PTs, OTs, SLPs) and behavioral health professionals.
We provide our customers with educational content geared towards strengthening their skills and improving patient outcomes. These courses also provide necessary continuing education credits to maintain professional licenses for these professionals.
Our solutions include over 1000 courses, including online/video, webinar and live-stream options, as well in-person courses conducted throughout the United States each year.
We are a national leader in the industry through the breadth of our formats and content, and overall focus on quality and customer service (4.7 out of 5.0 customer satisfaction with 325,000+ 5 Star Reviews).
Position Overview:
We're looking for a hungry junior backend developer who knows how to use AI to work at a level well above their experience. You don't need five years on your resume. You need sharp fundamentals, a working knowledge of modern AI development tools, and the drive to figure things out fast. This role sits on a small, tight-knit dev team where you'll have real ownership from day one. Senior developers will invest time in your growth, but we're also expecting you to invest in yourself. Stay current on AI tooling, push your own limits, and show up ready to ship. A key part of this role involves migrating acquired companies off WordPress and onto Summit's platforms, pulling data, mapping content, and working with the team to bring those properties into our ecosystem. You'll also help maintain the APIs that power our course catalog, checkout experience, and user-facing portal. Key Responsibilities Build and maintain REST APIs supporting Summit's course platform, checkout flow, and user experience Write and maintain SQL against Aurora RDS, including queries, schema changes, and data integrity work Migrate acquired company sites off WordPress and into Summit's platform Support integrations with third-party services including Recurly, NetSuite, Stripe, and HubSpot Work with AWS services including Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, and API Gateway Collaborate with frontend developers (Vue/Nuxt) to connect UI to backend services Use AI coding tools actively and deliberately to increase your output and code quality Document what you build and what you learn Qualifications 1-3 years of experience writing backend code in a production environment Actively uses AI tools (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar) as part of your daily workflow, not occasionally, but as a core part of how you work Can point to specific examples of how AI has made you faster, caught bugs, or helped you tackle something beyond your experience level Self-driven. You manage your own work, ask good questions, and can learn on the fly Strong communicator in a remote, async environment A genuine desire to grow quickly What We Use Tools: Jenkins, Docker, GitHub, Claude Languages: Java, SQL, JavaScript Frameworks: Springboot, Vue, Serverless Databases: AWS Aurora (MySQL) Cloud: AWS (Lambda, EC2, RDS, Elastic Beanstalk, API Gateway) Bonus: WordPress (data extraction/migration), HubSpot, Recurly, NetSuite Key Skills Solid foundation in Java and Springboot; Node.js and JavaScript experience are a plus Experience developing and consuming REST APIs Experience writing and maintaining SQL Some exposure to cloud services or CI/CD pipelines WordPress familiarity, not for building but for understanding and migrating data Organized, detail-oriented, and communicates clearly in writing Fit with Summit company values: Solution & Results Oriented, Team Oriented, Accountable & Reliable, Consumer Focused, Integrity Nice to have front end skills: Vue, Nuxt.js Summit Benefits Fully remote position Smaller company feel, larger company professionalism Competitive salary Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance (with strong company contribution) PTO and Paid Holiday Schedule 401k with Company Match