Senior Java Backend Engineer

Ciphus

A fast-moving, highly collaborative seed-stage team building governed AI-powered platforms for mid-market enterprise customers. We’re hiring a Senior Java Backend Engineer to help upgrade our platform to JDK 25+ and modernize Maven + cloud Git CI—without breaking privacy/security or losing observability.

The Work

• Lead the JDK 25+ migration for a governed backend platform, keeping behavior stable while modernizing runtime and build/tooling assumptions.
• Upgrade and harden the Maven build + toolchain configuration, so dependencies, modules, and regression coverage stay clean as the ecosystem shifts.
• Improve the cloud Git CI pipeline to make changes safer and faster—clear signals, repeatable builds, and confidence that we didn’t introduce “frankenstein coding.”
• Own the engineering quality loop: test-driven development plus observability as a first-class requirement (logs/metrics/traces, not afterthoughts).
• Collaborate with the team to keep the platform “headless soon” in a way that stays governed—data privacy and customer protections are non-negotiable.

What You’ll Need

• You’ve shipped and maintained Java backend services in production, and you can drive a runtime upgrade without guesswork.
• You’ve done build/tooling migrations (JDK + Maven/toolchain + CI) and understand how to keep regressions under control.
• You build with TDD discipline and can explain how your tests map to real system behavior.
• You treat observability as essential work: you’ve instrumented systems and used signals to debug and prevent issues.
• You’re comfortable working in a remote-first, globally distributed team and coordinating across time zones.

Even Better If

• You’ve worked with microservices plus performance-sensitive components like caches, relational databases, and analytics pipelines.
• You’ve supported systems that integrate with vector databases or other AI-adjacent data stores.

Who Thrives Here

• You like moving fast, but you don’t confuse speed with chaos—you protect constraints (especially privacy/governance) while still shipping.
• You’re the kind of engineer who brings clarity: you make the system observable, the build reliable, and the change safe for everyone downstream.
• You enjoy highly collaborative work where decisions are made with engineering reality, not vibes.
• You take ownership of outcomes—when something breaks, you don’t just fix it, you make it harder to break again.

The Team + Comp

You’ll work with a small seed-stage engineering org (about 25 people) with execs in the US and engineering/ops across Europe and India. The culture is highly collaborative and remote mostly, with hybrid encouraged depending on how the team is set up.

Location preference: We strongly prefer candidates based in Hyderabad. If you’re not in Hyderabad, remote within India is also acceptable.

Compensation: ₹40L–₹45L PA (based on experience), plus generous stock/equity. Benefits include health coverage, paid time off, and other standard benefits—details shared during the conversation.

Non-Traditional Backgrounds

If you’ve done serious backend work in startups, open source, or enterprise environments—and you can show how you handle migrations with tests + observability—we’d love to hear from you.

How to Apply

Interested? You’ll start with a conversation with Navii, our hiring team’s AI—it's a chance for us to learn about you beyond your resume.