Backend Engineer

Level: Mid-Senior  
Location: Dubai, UAE (Onsite) or UK (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-time

About Us:

First Orion is a telecommunications technology company focused on restoring trust and transparency to phone communications. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas (USA), First Orion provides solutions that protect consumers from scam and spoofed calls while enabling businesses to deliver trusted, branded calling experiences. 

With teams across North America, Europe, and the Middle East, First Orion operates in a highly collaborative, distributed environment that brings together world-class engineering, operations, and customer-focused talent. This role will work closely with colleagues across multiple regions, contributing to products and services that help millions of consumers and businesses communicate with confidence.

About the role:

We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to help design, build, deploy, and own core microservices. This hands-on role emphasizes backend architecture and cloud deployment for services supporting call treatment orchestration, brand data, analytics, and billing.

You’ll work in a cloud-agnostic, multi-tenant environment using hexagonal and event-driven architecture. You’ll collaborate with distributed engineering teams to deliver secure, observable, carrier-grade services that can run consistently across public clouds and on-premises environments. 

This is an individual contributor role with no direct people management responsibilities.

What you'll do:

• Design, build, enhance, and own Java 21 and Spring Boot 3.x microservices

• Develop REST APIs and services supporting call treatment orchestration, brand data, analytics, and billing

• Apply hexagonal architecture to isolate business logic from infrastructure through ports and adapters

• Build event-driven services using Apache Kafka for event streaming and asynchronous processing

• Work with PostgreSQL, Redis, and MinIO or other S3-compatible object storage

• Design cloud-agnostic, multi-tenant services for deployment across public cloud and on-premises environments

• Containerize and deploy services using Docker and Kubernetes

• Implement secure integrations using modern identity, access management, secrets management, and transport-security practices

• Build observable services using modern monitoring, structured logging, dashboards, and distributed tracing tools

• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, technical design decisions, testing, troubleshooting, and production support

• Collaborate with distributed engineering teams to deliver reliable, maintainable, carrier-grade solutions

Must-have:

• 3+ years of professional Java development experience using Java 11 or later; Java 17 or 21 preferred

• Hands-on experience with Spring Boot 3.x, including Web, Data JPA, and Security

• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs

• Experience with PostgreSQL and/or Redis

• Experience using Git; Bitbucket experience preferred

• Foundational experience with Docker and Kubernetes

• Understanding of microservice architecture and modern backend design principles

• Experience designing, building, testing, deploying, and supporting production services

• Strong problem-solving and communication skills

• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, distributed environment

Nice to have:

• Experience with Gradle using Kotlin DSL

• Experience with OIDC or comparable identity and access management standards

• Telecommunications or carrier-integration exposure

• Experience building multi-tenant SaaS platforms

• Experience with hexagonal, ports-and-adapters, or clean architecture

• Experience creating or maintaining Helm charts

• Experience with modern monitoring, dashboards, distributed tracing, or structured application logging

• Knowledge of cloud-agnostic design patterns and deployment across public cloud or on-premises environments

• Experience with S3-compatible object storage

• Experience using secrets-management tools

• Familiarity with GDPR, data residency, or regional data-protection requirements

• Experience building high-throughput or low-latency systems

While the position primarily follows local business hours in the employee's country of employment, occasional flexibility may be required to support planned maintenance activities, project implementations, and service escalations across time zones. 

This position may be based in either the United Kingdom or Dubai, UAE.

• For UK-based employees, the salary range for this position is £30,800 - £54,100, depending on experience 

• Compensation for UAE-based employees will be discussed during the recruitment process and will depend on experience 

Company Benefits 

Our work environment is energetic, focused, fun, and collaborative. We've created a unique culture built on trust, transparency, and empowerment, where employees are encouraged to take ownership, make decisions, and contribute to the success of the business. Our team is passionate about what we do and driven to make a meaningful impact every day. At First Orion, everyone plays an important role in the bigger picture. 

Working hours and employment terms will comply with applicable local employment laws and regulations in the country of hire 

This role may be based in either the United Kingdom or Dubai, UAE, depending on the selected candidate's location. Applicants must have the legal right to work in their country of residence. 

We offer a competitive benefits package that varies by location and may include: 

• Competitive salary package 

• Comprehensive medical insurance 

• Generous paid time off and public holidays in accordance with local employment requirements 

• Retirement or pension benefits where applicable 

• Annual home-country flight allowance for eligible UAE-based employees and dependents 

• Flexible working arrangements and a collaborative team environment 

• Opportunities for professional growth and development within a global organization 

First Orion is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic. 

By applying for this role, you acknowledge that your personal data will be processed in accordance with First Orion's privacy policy and applicable data protection laws.