Staff Engineer

Landmark Digital

Meet Landmark Digital – we're part of the Landmark Group, one of the largest retail and hospitality organisations in the Middle East, North Africa, and India. We're the guardians of the group's digital arm which encompasses Enterprise & E-commerce Tech, Product Management, User Design, Omni Operations, Customer Experience, Loyalty, Content Production, Studio, Growth and MarTech, Finance and HR functions. With a futuristic outlook, we strive to make the digital experience of our customers seamless.

Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, we're currently driving the digital experience for 8 industry-leading brands in 8 geographies and rapidly expanding our footprint across new territories and functions. Join us, and you'll be part of the Middle East's biggest bricks-to-clicks success story, that registers over 100% growth year-on-year.

Agile work culture: Within the digital function, you'll be hands-on from day one, working in squads to make independent decisions and game-changing contributions that directly impact millions of customers. You'll collaborate every day with teammates from 20+ nationalities, across Dubai, India, Europe and the US.

Space for excellence: Landmark Digital has a dedicated and growing software development centre in Bangalore, India, where we incubate, design and optimise our products and experiences. We also offer the option to work remotely for certain key roles.

New technologies to play with: You'll work with the latest in Enterprise & E-commerce tech, headless commerce, open source, microservices, Java Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, React Native apps, React frontend and a host of the latest cloud-native technologies hosted on Azure Cloud.

Focus on learning and growth: Excellent remuneration and perks are part of the package, but we also budget ample time and resources for training and upskilling.

Fun at work: You'll enjoy our well-equipped breakrooms (FIFA and pool are huge favourites), team events, celebrations and a host of other amenities.

Job Description

We are looking for a Staff SDE – Java Backend who will serve as a technical leader, driving architectural direction, multi-team initiatives, and the development of highly scalable distributed systems. You will partner with Product, Architecture, DevOps and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver impactful technology solutions across a complex digital ecosystem.

You will independently define and deliver large-scale, multi-phase projects, mentor engineers, and shape technical strategy. The role also includes leveraging LLMs and GenAI-driven tools to enhance engineering productivity, reduce cycle time, and build the next generation of internal developer experience tools.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Drive technical strategy and architecture for complex distributed systems and core platform components.
• Own end-to-end delivery of high-impact, multi-team engineering initiatives.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into clear, pragmatic technical solutions.
• Define technical roadmaps, sequence projects into phases, and ensure timely execution across teams.

Software Engineering & System Design

• Architect, develop, and optimize microservices using Java, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud.
• Design scalable, resilient, secure cloud-native applications using Azure/AWS.
• Lead system design reviews, architecture discussions, and technical deep dives.
• Solve complex cross-system issues through deep debugging, performance tuning, and root cause analysis.
• Build frameworks and shared libraries to accelerate development across squads.

AI & Engineering Productivity

• Champion adoption of AI-assisted development practices and LLM/GenAI tools across engineering teams to enhance workflows, improve cycle time, and automate routine tasks.
• Define clear guidelines, training, and standards for effective and secure use of AI tools, including prompt engineering, code generation, and review expectations.
• Integrate AI-driven capabilities such as code generation, unit test creation, log analysis, documentation summarization, and code review assistance into the development workflow.
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices for AI-generated code, including human-in-the-loop reviews, coding standards, test automation, secure coding, and design-first development.
• Measure and optimize engineering productivity using AI-related metrics (cycle time, PR throughput, AI-code adoption, defect escape rate, developer satisfaction) and continuously identify opportunities to reduce bottlenecks with AI.

Collaboration & Cross-Functional Impact

• Work closely with Product Owners, Architects, QE, DevOps, and peer engineering teams.
• Communicate technical trade-offs, risks, and decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Coordinate across teams to resolve dependencies and align on architectural standards.
• Influence technical direction beyond your immediate team.

Team Leadership & Mentoring

• Mentor engineers across multiple teams, guiding them in design, coding, debugging, and best practices.
• Participate actively in hiring and talent development.
• Raise the engineering bar through code reviews, design critiques, and technical leadership.
• Help define and uphold engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural principles.

Ownership & Operational Excellence

• Take full ownership of systems from development to deployment, monitoring, and maintenance.
• Ensure engineering deliverables meet performance, reliability, and security criteria.
• Proactively identify areas for improvement and propose scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Lead incident response, post-mortems, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Skills and Qualifications

Must-Have

• 10+ years of professional experience in Java Backend Development.
• Deep expertise in Java, J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and building microservices-based architectures.
• Proven experience shipping scalable, high-availability, high-performance systems in a microservices environment, including load handling, horizontal scaling, observability, and fault-tolerant design.
• Experience with Kafka, JMS, distributed system patterns, caching, asynchronous processing.
• Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes / OpenShift, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong knowledge of working with databases: Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.
• Experience designing and scaling systems on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, debugging capabilities, and system-level thinking.
• Strong communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Ability to lead teams, influence stakeholders, and drive technical initiatives.

Good-to-Have

• Experience applying LLMs/GenAI to improve engineering productivity and developer workflows.
• Prompt engineering experience and familiarity with integrating models into applications.
• Experience with Domain-Driven Design, event-driven systems, CQRS, or enterprise integration patterns.
• Familiarity with Linux systems and container-based deployment architectures.
• Experience with application servers such as Tomcat.
• Contributions to internal platforms or open-source projects.

Personal Attributes

• Strong leadership qualities with the ability to influence without authority.
• High levels of self-motivation, ownership, and drive.
• Critical thinking abilities and a strong problem-solving mindset.
• Excellent team collaboration skills and a positive, proactive attitude.
• Adaptability, willingness to learn, and continuous improvement mindset.
• Ability to work under pressure and handle multiple competing priorities effectively.