Senior Software Engineer - 6 Month Contract Start Date: ASAPRate: Market rates, outside ir35Contract Length: 6 monthsLocation: Manchester, hybrid Key ResponsibilitiesDesign, build, and maintain scalable backend services using Java, aligning with best practices for performance, reliability, and maintainability.Work with containerisation/orchestration technologies (Kubernetes) to deploy, manage, and scale services.Develop and maintain systems on Cloud Platform, leveraging cloud-native capabilities.Implement and manage message streaming / queuing architectures using Kafka (or similar), ensuring high throughput, resilience, and fault tolerance.Contribute to CI/CD processes: build pipelines, automated testing, code reviews.Collaborate cross-functionally with architects, DevOps/SRE, QA to define technical roadmap, troubleshoot production issues, and ensure observability. Essential Skills and ExperienceStrong and proven experience in Java, Spring Boot, in enterprise-scale backend systems.Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, deploying microservices in production.Solid working knowledge of Cloud Platforms, including networking, storage, services like GKE, Pub/Sub, etc.In depth experience with Kafka: setting up clusters, producers/consumers, tuning, fault handling.Experience with microservices architecture, REST APIs, and distributed systems.Strong CI/CD and DevOps mindset; experience with automated testing, monitoring, logging, observability.Ability to work in agile environment; stro