About The Opportunity
This is a senior engineering role inside a software house with a startup mindset — small team, real ownership, and a genuine appetite for new technologies. You won't be maintaining legacy systems in silence. You'll be shaping how things are built, contributing to architecture decisions, and working with a team that values critical thinking and proactivity over process compliance. If you've spent 5+ years doing serious Java backend work, you're curious about where AI-assisted development is going, and you want to actually influence the technical direction of what you build — this is worth your attention.
At HumanIT (4.4 ⭐ on Glassdoor, 89% recommend), people stay because the work is real and the culture backs it up. Remote-first, autonomous, and built around people who want to grow — not just deliver tickets.
🔗 What it's really like to work here: https://www.humanit.pt/careers/#work-at
PROJECT & CONTEXT
You'll work within a small, cross-functional engineering team building modern software products across dynamic and innovative projects. The role is firmly backend-focused, but you'll collaborate across the full stack and contribute to architecture discussions that go beyond your immediate feature scope. The team embraces AI code assistance tooling as part of the daily workflow — including OpenCode, Ollama, Qwen3, Claude Code, and similar tools — expecting engineers to use them actively for development, refactoring, testing, documentation, and troubleshooting. This is an environment that rewards autonomy, continuous learning, and technical curiosity.
Experience
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- 5+ years of backend development experience with Java in production environments
- Great English communication skills — written and spoken, for team collaboration and technical documentation
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
Backend Engineering
- Strong hands-on experience with Spring and Spring Boot — this is your primary stack
- Solid software engineering fundamentals: clean code, testing, code review, and CI/CD practices
- Experience with React or Angular — backend-focused, but comfortable holding your own in full-stack conversations
AI-Assisted Development
- Active use of AI coding assistants in your daily workflow — OpenCode, Ollama, Qwen3, Claude Code, or equivalent
- Comfortable using AI tooling for code generation, refactoring, unit test writing, documentation, and troubleshooting
- Pragmatic and critical about these tools — you know when they help and when they don't
Leadership & Architecture
- Previous team leadership experience — you've guided or mentored other engineers
- Genuine interest in software architecture — you think about how systems fit together, not just how individual features work
- Proactive approach to technical decisions, code quality, and engineering best practices
Mindset
- Strong interest in learning and adopting new technologies — curiosity is part of how you work
- Autonomous and proactive — you drive things forward without waiting to be asked
- Critical thinker — you contribute ideas and challenge assumptions constructively
NICE TO HAVE
- Cloud platform experience — GCP preferred (Cloud Run, GKE, BigQuery, Pub/Sub), but AWS or Azure also valued
- Experience in a software house or product startup environment
- Contributions to architecture design at team or system level (ADRs, tech specs, etc.)
- Familiarity with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices in a backend context
- JavaScript or TypeScript proficiency alongside backend work
WHY HUMANIT
HumanIT is a Portuguese technology and consulting company where people actually stay — and recommend it to others (4.4 ⭐ Glassdoor, 89% recommend rate).
What You Get
- 💰 15th month salary
- 🏥 Health insurance covering your family
- 🎂 Birthday off
- 🌍 Mobility programme for digital nomads
- ⚖️ Real work-life balance
- 📚 Training budget
- 🚀 Career growth alongside an experienced, collaborative team
🔗 Full benefits: https://www.humanit.pt/careers/#perks