Lifted, an Upwork Company™ Technology/Software

#138512 - Backend Software Engineer - Payments

Remote Full-time

We are seeking a backend software engineer for a remote contract engagement building and operating scalable, revenue-critical payment infrastructure. You will deliver payment features, reduce technical debt, and modernize services while collaborating with engineers, product managers, and partner teams.

Enterprise experience strongly preferred.

Key Responsibilities

  • Implement production backend features for payment flows.
  • Refactor legacy services, improve test coverage, and modernize APIs, including migrations from deprecated APIs.
  • Deliver clean, well-tested, production-ready code with passing CI/CD pipelines and peer-review approval.
  • Deliver initiatives within agreed sprint cycles and participate in code reviews, design discussions, and sprint ceremonies.
  • Clarify requirements with product managers and partner teams and deliver end-to-end solutions.
  • Produce designs, API specifications, knowledge-transfer documentation, and runbooks for owned workstreams.
  • Support maintainability and a smooth handoff to the engineering team at the conclusion of the engagement.

Must-Have Skills

  • 3+ years of backend software engineering experience.
  • Experience building and operating production backend services at scale.
  • Strong proficiency in Java as the primary programming language, with Kotlin and Python as complementary skills.
  • Hands-on experience with RESTful and GraphQL APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems.
  • Payments, fintech, or billing domain experience, including gateways, processors, or payment service providers.
  • Experience writing unit, integration, and contract tests.
  • Agile/Scrum experience with sprint-based delivery.
  • Ability to ramp quickly on an existing codebase with minimal guidance.
  • Git-based version control and code review using GitLab.
  • Hands-on experience with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
  • Relational database experience with MySQL and SQL.
  • Distributed systems experience with message queues, asynchronous processing, and eventual consistency.
  • Jira experience for task and sprint tracking.
  • Experience building end-to-end backend payment flows in production, including charges, refunds, disputes, and webhooks.
  • Legacy service refactoring or migration experience with regression testing.
  • Experience resolving production incidents in payment or billing systems.
  • Experience designing internal APIs consumed by multiple downstream services.
  • Ability to own feature delivery with minimal supervision and collaborate asynchronously with distributed, cross-functional teams.

Nice-to-Have Skills

  • Experience in a large enterprise engineering organization.
  • Experience with Spring Boot, Gradle, and service mesh technologies.
  • PCI-DSS compliance, payment security, or financial data handling experience.
  • Experience with Datadog observability tooling.
  • Open-source contributions or a portfolio of shipped payment features.

Required Tools & Platforms

  • Java, with Kotlin and Python as complementary languages.
  • RESTful and GraphQL APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems.
  • Git, GitLab, and GitLab CI/CD.
  • MySQL and SQL.
  • Message queues and asynchronous processing systems.
  • Jira.

Location, Time & Engagement

  • Candidates must be based in India or a nearby eligible APAC location no more than two hours ahead of or behind India Standard Time (IST).
  • IST support is required, preferably 10 AM to 7 PM IST.
  • Remote contract engagement, 40 hours per week.
  • Expected engagement through March 31, 2027; start date to be agreed.
  • One opening is available.
  • This is not currently a contract-to-hire opportunity.

Job description provided by Lifted, an Upwork Company™.
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