Freelance Java Backend Developer Jobs in Orem, UT

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join one of our high-impact engineering squads. In this role, you will serve as a technical leader — designing complex systems, driving architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and delivering high-quality software across our cloud-native Evolution DMS platform. You will work at the intersection of scale, performance, and user impact, tackling some of the hardest problems in our stack.

This is a full-time position with the opportunity to work in a collaborative, Agile environment where your decisions carry real weight.

What You'll Do

• Lead technical design and architecture for complex, cross-functional features — evaluating trade-offs, defining patterns, and ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable, and performant across a large enterprise-grade codebase.
• Build and own platform-level frameworks used by other engineering squads — including authentication/authorization systems, API development tooling, webhook infrastructure, messaging pipelines, AI integrations, and CI/CD tooling.
• Drive engineering excellence through code reviews, architectural guidance, and establishing best practices that raise the bar for the entire team.
• Mentor and develop junior and mid-level engineers through pairing, design reviews, and knowledge sharing — fostering a culture of continuous learning (teaching experience a strong plus).
• Own end-to-end delivery of features from design through production — writing clean, efficient, well-documented code in Java, Kotlin, and TypeScript adhering to team standards.
• Lead and execute complex integrations with third-party systems — including payment processors, identity providers, OEM data feeds, and external APIs — ensuring resilience, security, and maintainability.
• Champion performance and reliability — proactively identify and resolve bottlenecks, design for failure, and implement resilience patterns (circuit breakers, caching strategies, backoff/retry) across our service integrations.
• Drive cloud infrastructure decisions on AWS — including serverless architecture (Lambda, API Gateway), container orchestration (EKS), messaging (SNS/SQS, RabbitMQ), and data services (RDS PostgreSQL, ElastiCache/Redis, DynamoDB).
• Manage and evolve CI/CD pipelines — automating build, test, and deployment processes using GitLab CI, Gradle, Terraform, and Serverless Framework to enable rapid, consistent releases across environments.
• Lead incident response and root cause analysis for high-severity production issues, translating findings into actionable architectural improvements.
• Contribute to infrastructure as code using Terraform, supporting reproducible, version-controlled AWS environment provisioning.
• Maintain and improve technical documentation in Confluence, ensuring architectural decisions, patterns, and runbooks are accessible and up to date.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies — including AI/ML tooling — making recommendations that align with long-term platform direction.

What You Should Have

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field with 5+ years of professional software engineering experience; or equivalent experience in lieu of a degree.
• Deep expertise in Java / Kotlin / Groovy and the Jakarta EE ecosystem — including JPA, Wildfly/JBoss, or Spring — with a strong command of object-oriented and functional design principles.
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript and JavaScript — including Node.js and modern backend frameworks such as NestJS — with the ability to contribute across the full stack.
• Demonstrated ability to architect and deliver distributed, cloud-native systems at scale — including microservices, event-driven architectures, and RESTful API design.
• Integrate AI-assisted development tools (such as GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent) into day-to-day engineering workflows — including code generation, automated code review, test authoring, and documentation — to improve individual and team productivity without compromising code quality or security standards.
• Extensive hands-on experience with AWS — specifically Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, S3, SNS, SQS, EKS, ElastiCache, and DynamoDB — and a track record of deploying and operating production workloads in cloud environments.
• Advanced proficiency with PostgreSQL and other data stores (Redis/Valkey, MongoDB) — including query optimization, indexing strategies, and schema design.
• Proven experience designing and implementing authentication and authorization systems — including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and integration with identity providers such as Okta and FusionAuth.
• Proficiency with containerization and orchestration — Docker and Kubernetes/EKS — at a production operations level.
• Demonstrated experience leading or contributing to large-scale migrations — including legacy system rewrites, on-prem to cloud migrations, or major platform re-architectures.
• Solid understanding of messaging and event-driven systems — RabbitMQ, SNS/SQS, and ETCD-backed configuration management.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with a demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• AWS Certification (Cloud Practitioner, Solutions Architect, or AI Practitioner) strongly preferred.
• Experience on a developer platform or framework team — building shared tooling, libraries, and infrastructure that other engineering squads build on top of.
• Familiarity with AI/ML integration patterns in production software — including LLM APIs, prompt engineering, or agentic workflow tooling.
• Solid experience with infrastructure as code using Terraform and deployment automation using Serverless Framework and GitLab CI.
• Experience with desktop application development and migration from legacy desktop (Swing or equivalent) to modern web/React front ends.
• Experience building and maintaining third-party payment integrations (e.g., WorldPay, Stripe, or equivalent payment processors), with strong understanding of PCI compliance considerations.
• Experience with build tooling — Gradle, Ant, or equivalent — in large multi-module Java projects.
• Familiarity with test-driven development (TDD), Jest, and maintaining high code coverage standards across unit, integration, and regression testing.
• Experience with observability tooling — Datadog, distributed tracing, structured logging, and defining SLOs/SLIs for production services.
• Prior experience in a teaching, mentoring, or adjunct instruction role is a meaningful differentiator and reflects the collaborative culture we value.
• Working knowledge of Linux/Unix systems and scripting (Python or Bash).
• Oracle Certified Java Programmer or equivalent certification a plus.

Tools & Technologies You'll Work With

• Languages: Java · Kotlin · Groovy · TypeScript · JavaScript · Python
• Frameworks: Jakarta EE · Spring · NestJS · Node.js · Serverless Framework
• Infrastructure: AWS (Lambda · API Gateway · EKS · S3 · SNS/SQS · CloudFront · ElastiCache · DynamoDB) · Terraform · Docker · Kubernetes
• Data: PostgreSQL · Redis/Valkey · MongoDB · RabbitMQ · ETCD
• Auth: Okta · FusionAuth · OAuth 2.0 · OIDC
• Dev Tools: GitLab · Gradle · Jira · Confluence · SwaggerHub · Bruno · Datadog

Why Join Us

• Work on a platform used daily by thousands of dealerships across North America
• Engineer at a scale where performance, resilience, and architectural decisions genuinely matter
• Be part of a collaborative, respectful engineering culture that values technical depth and continuous learning
• Competitive compensation and benefits package, with meaningful career growth opportunities inside an organization that has delivered double-digit revenue growth year over year for more than a decade — backed by over 40 years of industry leadership and a track record that proves stability and ambition are not mutually exclusive
• Flexible work arrangement with a hybrid work environment.