About this Backend Engineer role at Kpler
About the Role
As an Engineer II within our Engineering Maritime & Logistics division, you will play a pivotal role in designing, building, and operating high-throughput data processing and API distribution systems. You will take end-to-end ownership of real-time streaming applications, backend services, and reliable pipelines that deliver critical maritime intelligence to global consumers via Kafka, Flink, and Snowflake. By maintaining platform resilience and scaling event-driven architectures, your work directly powers the actionable insights our clients rely on to navigate complex global trade.
Key Responsibilities
Design, build, and maintain high-performance backend microservices and APIs using Java, TypeScript, and PHP.
Develop and operate scalable real-time stream-processing applications using Apache Kafka, Kafka Streams, and Apache Flink.
Drive end-to-end technical ownership of backend services from design and testing through deployment, continuous monitoring, and production operations.
Optimize system health, throughput, and consumer lag across streaming infrastructure to maximize data freshness and platform uptime.
Investigate production incidents, perform thorough root-cause analysis, and implement long-term structural improvements.
Reduce technical debt by continuously elevating software maintainability, observability, automated test coverage, and CI/CD practices.
Partner cross-functionally with product managers, platform engineers, and peer teams to turn complex maritime domain needs into robust software.
Experience & Background
What you'll need (Must-haves)
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3+ years of professional software engineering experience delivering backend services and data pipelines in production.
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Strong proficiency in at least two core backend programming languages: Java, TypeScript, PHP, or Scala.
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Practical experience building and operating event-driven applications or data pipelines in cloud environments (AWS).
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Hands-on experience with containerized deployments using Kubernetes, Docker, and GitOps workflows.
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Solid background in SQL, relational database design, data modeling, and distributed system fundamentals.
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Production experience with Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, or Snowflake.
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Exposure to Test-Driven Development (TDD) and modern observability stacks (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, metrics, tracing).
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Experience working on high-throughput, low-latency streaming systems where data freshness is critical.
