Backend Software Engineer

About the jobStubHub International (SHI) is a marketplace that provides fans a safe, transparent, and trusted environment to buy and sell tickets for sport and music events all over the world. It allows fans with tickets they can no longer use to recoup part of the money they've spent and fans that didn't have the chance to buy tickets during the on-sale, to access them at any time. Our Purpose: We create experiences of a lifetime.At StubHub International, we share a set of values that define and drive our culture:We put fans first: We earn preference and trust by putting fans at the heart of everything we do.We Innovate: We deliver by challenging the status quo and finding faster, smarter and better ways of doing things.We are one team with a purpose: We believe and operate under the premise that we are better together than we are as individuals.We are diverse & inclusive: We value and learn from a range of perspectives and give all viewpoints credence.The OpportunityWe are looking for a talented and motivated Backend Software Engineer to join our Engineering team (full remote). As a mid-level engineer, you will be a key contributor to the design, development, and evolution of our backend platform - a distributed, high-throughput system that powers the StubHub International marketplace.You will work closely with fellow engineers, product managers, and designers to build robust, scalable services, participate actively in the full software development lifecycle, and contribute to the wider Backend Engineering Guild. This is a role for someone who takes pride in the quality of their work, operates with a good degree of autonomy, and is eager to grow alongside a high-performing team.ResponsibilitiesDesign, develop, test, and maintain backend microservices using Java and/or Kotlin, following established engineering best practices.Build and maintain event-driven integrations using Apache Kafka, including producer and consumer implementations, schema management, and stream processing patterns.Create and consume RESTful and/or asynchronous APIs, ensuring they are well-documented, versioned, and aligned with platform standards.Participate actively in the full software development lifecycle: requirements analysis, technical specification, system diagramming, refinement sessions, and acceptance criteria definition.Contribute to the Backend Engineering Guild - sharing knowledge, promoting best practices, participating in technical discussions, and helping to raise the engineering bar across the organization.Write high-quality unit, integration, and contract tests, treating test coverage as a first-class engineering concern.Engage with AI-assisted development tools and processes, incorporating them where appropriate to improve delivery speed and code quality.Collaborate constructively in code reviews, both giving and receiving feedback in a respectful and growth-oriented manner.Proactively identify and surface technical debt, risks, and opportunities for improvement within your area of ownership.Communicate clearly and concisely - both verbally and in writing - with technical and non-technical stakeholders across geographies.RequirementsTechnical skills & experienceSolid professional experience with Java as a primary backend language (preferable); Kotlin experienceis valued.Practical experience with event-driven architectures, ideally using Apache Kafka or Confluent Platform - producer/consumer patterns, offset management, consumer groups, topic design, etc.Hands-on experience building and consuming RESTful APIs; familiarity with API-first design, OpenAPI, and versioning strategies.Experience working in microservices environments - service decomposition, inter-service communication, distributed tracing, and observability fundamentals.Solid grounding in software engineering best practices: design patterns (SOLID, DRY, CQRS, etc.), clean code principles, and refactoring.A culture of quality in testing: confident writing unit tests and familiar with integration and contract testing approaches.Experience working with or alongside AI-powered development tools (e.G. GitHub Copilot, AI-assisted code review, LLM-based developer tooling) and an openness to adopting AI workflows as part of the engineering process.Comfortable with version control workflows (Git, PRs, branching strategies) and CI/CD pipelines.Behaviors & ways of workingCapable of taking ownership of well-scoped tasks and features end-to-end, from design to production, with limited supervision.Consistently delivers well-tested, well-reviewed, and well-documented code; treats quality asnon-negotiable, not an afterthought.An active, constructive participant in the team - present in stand-ups, retrospectives, and technical discussions; helps teammates unblockand grow.Shares learnings and perspectives within the Backend Engineering Guild; contributes to shared standards, runbooks, and tooling.Approaches problems with rigor; comfortable working through ambig