Backend Development Team Lead

Job Summary
The Back-End Development Team Lead plays a pivotal role in leading and managing an offshore backend development team, delivering high-quality software solutions, and ensuring adherence to engineering excellence. This role is essential to designing and implementing components for Mercans’ global payroll software, HR Blizz, and other solutions. The Team Lead is responsible for maintaining engineering standards, optimizing performance, mentoring team members, and building scalable, robust, and secure systems that meet business requirements.

Duties and Responsibilities
Team Management and Leadership
Manage and lead a team of offshore backend developers to ensure successful project delivery.
Conduct technical interviews for new roles within the team.
Mentor junior team members and promote technical knowledge sharing.
Contribute toward achieving team and organizational goals.
Development and Implementation:
Design and implement robust, scalable, and highly available backend systems using a modern technology stack.
Write clean, maintainable, and secure code for web services, applications, and cloud infrastructure.
Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of HR Blizz system integrations with client applications.
Validate code quality with automated unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
Engineering Standards and Best Practices:
Establish engineering, architecture, coding, and other standards to support the software development process.
Ensure engineering best practices are followed for all solutions.
Identify and optimize performance issues in software and infrastructure.
Automate processes to improve efficiency and reliability.
Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement:
Collaborate with cross-functional teams on design, best practices, and code reviews.
Work closely with project teams to meet business requirements and propose feasible solutions.
Documentation and Reporting:
Create and maintain professional technical documentation for internal and external use.
Prepare clear, thorough, and accurate documentation of technical processes and systems.
Education and Experience:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
Proven track record of leading a team of 4-5 or more engineers for 2+ years.
5+ years of relevant work experience in backend development.
3+ years of experience designing microservice solutions.
At least 4 years of experience with technologies such as Kotlin, Java/Spring, and relational/non-relational databases (MySQL, MongoDB).
Proficiency in building APIs and working with private/public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
Experience with Docker, containerization, and CI/CD tools.
Strong understanding of SQL, event-driven architecture, and experience with queues (e.g., RabbitMQ).
Hands-on experience with test-driven development processes.
Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and documentation skills.
Fluent in English, both written and spoken.
Strong understanding and practical experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, technologies, or applications relevant to the role.
Ability to leverage AI-driven solutions to improve efficiency, decision-making, and innovation in daily work.
Nice to Have:
Proficiency with Kubernetes.
Experience automating HR or Finance domain processes.
Familiarity with monitoring and alerting tools.
Performance Goals:
Formalize the deployment process
S: Formalize the deployment process and migration, clear rules, how, when create the team documents, diagrams
M: created and aligned with engineering leadership documents in YT
A: dedicate capacity, approach as the tasks in the backlog
R: to improve existing flaws in deployment process
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Document the Task Runner flow
S: Document task initiation flow in Task Runner, detailed per service
M: created and aligned with eng. leadership documents in YT
A: dedicate capacity, approach as the tasks in the backlog
R: currently there is no single source of truth and solid piece of documentation for TR flow. It blocks effectively further TR optimization
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Static analysis tool POC
S: Deliver POC for code static analysis tool (on free version)
M: deploy free version of SonarCube or similar solution, and configure basic quality gates and rules
A: cover basic scenarios with most common static code analysis use cases. Utilize predefined configurations. Use free versions
R: Absence of static code analysis essentially decrease code quality and reduce our abilities to identify flaws in the code early
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Code review participation
S: Code review participation
M: For those engineers who participate in code reviews (including Lead), complete at least 2 code reviews per sprint.
A: dedicate capacity per sprint
R: no reviews no deliverables
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Defects in code
S: do not exceed the defect level
M: No more than 20 percent of the tasks are reopened after reaching the acceptance environment per sprint
A: ensure code and solution quality, do proper testing and static analysis
R: low level of the defects in code ensures less QA and developers work overhead, as well as solution stability in the corresponding environment
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Tasks reopened
S: do not exceed the task reopened level
M: No more than 15 percent of the tasks are reopened after reaching the production environment per sprint
A: ensure code and solution quality, do proper testing and static analysis
R: low level of the task reopened ensures less QA and developers work overhead, as well as solution stability in the corresponding production environment
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Estimation and delivery
S: Keep the estimates/delivery time rate level
M: Tasks delivered in one sprint do not exceed the estimation more than 1.6times
A: Ensure detailed discovery and decomposition of the scope requirements at the grooming phase, plan the work, think through the development process ahead
R: factual delivery timeline needs to be closer to estimated timeline
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement
Achieve Task Runner optimization
S: make a discovery and come up with the realistic plan of TR optimization. Execute the plan with the Team collaborative effort
M: achieve at least 2x faster execution of report generation and period closure phases
A: utilize not only own capacity but involve the developers from the BE Team, aligning with business priority deliverables
R: TR challenges produce escalations and cross-impact on multiple legal entities and clients
T: Progress reviewed periodically as part of continuous process improvement