Software Development Engineer – Backend

About Appen

Appen is a leader in AI enablement for critical tasks such as model improvement, supervision, and evaluation. To do this we leverage our global crowd of over one million skilled contractors, speaking over 180 languages and dialects, representing 130 countries. In addition, we utilize the industry's most advanced AI-assisted data annotation platform to collect and label various types of data like images, text, speech, audio, and video.

Our data is crucial for building and continuously improving the world's most innovative artificial intelligence systems and Appen is already trusted by the world's largest technology companies. Now with the explosion of interest in generative AI, Appen is helping leaders in automotive, financial services, retail, healthcare, and governments the confidence to deploy world-class AI products.

At Appen, we are purpose driven. Our fundamental role in AI is to ensure all models are helpful, honest, and harmless, so we firmly believe in unlocking the power of AI to build a better world. We have a learn-it-all culture that values perspective, growth, and innovation. We are customer-obsessed, action-oriented, and celebrate winning together.

At Appen, we are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace. We are an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We are looking for a passionate Software Development Engineer with 3+ years of experience building scalable, production-grade backend systems. You will work on mission-critical platforms powering AI and machine-learning workflows, solving complex distributed-systems problems at scale.

You should be someone who takes pride in craftsmanship, writes clean and testable code, thinks deeply about system design, and constantly looks for ways to improve performance, reliability, and security.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate high-throughput, low-latency microservices using Java and Spring Boot.
• Develop and evolve RESTful APIs consumed by internal and external systems.
• Own features end-to-end — from design and development to deployment and production support.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, data scientists, and platform teams to translate business problems into elegant technical solutions.
• Write high-quality, maintainable, and well-tested code with a strong focus on performance and security.
• Participate actively in architecture discussions, design reviews, and code reviews, raising the bar for engineering excellence.
• Build resilient systems using messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka.
• Work with relational databases and search stores such as PostgreSQL/MySQL and Elasticsearch.
• Help improve system observability, monitoring, and operational maturity in production.
  
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on backend development experience.
• Strong proficiency in Java and the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, etc.).
• Deep understanding and expertise of REST APIs, microservices architectures
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and system design.
• Experience working with RDBMS (schema design, indexing, query optimization).
• A mindset focused on quality, scalability, reliability, and clean code.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.
  
  

Great to Have / Bonus

• Experience with AWS (EKS/ECS, RDS, S3, IAM, monitoring tools).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and hands-on experience with Kafka or other event-streaming systems.
• Experience using Elasticsearch / OpenSearch for search or analytics use cases.
• Exposure to distributed systems and high-scale SaaS platforms and interest in AI/ML systems and data platforms.
  
  

Appen is the global leader in data for the AI Lifecycle with more than 25 years’ experience in data sourcing, annotation, and model evaluation. Through our expertise, platform, and global crowd, we enable organizations to launch the world’s most innovative artificial intelligence products with speed and at scale. Appen maintains the industry’s most advanced AI-assisted data annotation platform and boasts a global crowd of more than 1 million contributors worldwide, speaking more than 235 languages. Our products and services make Appen a trusted partner to leaders in technology, automotive, finance, retail, healthcare, and government. Appen has customers and offices globally.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.