Backend Lead (Java/Kotlin)
Salmon is a technology-driven financial company building a banking and lending platform across Southeast Asia, starting in the Philippines.
In three years, we've grown to 7M+ app downloads, 2M+ monthly active users, 7,000+ partner stores, and US$350M+ raised from top-tier investors.
Here, you get real ownership from day one, high standards, and direct communication. You'll work alongside a team that combines deep local knowledge and experience scaling regulated financial companies from scratch.
If you want to solve complex problems at scale and directly impact how millions of people access and manage money, come build with us.
Southeast Asia's fintech moment starts here.
About the role
Premium Banking is a new product direction at Salmon — no legacy code, no inherited architecture, no prior technical decisions to work around. You'll lay the technical foundation before a team exists to build on it, then lead the team that takes it to production.
What you'll do
- Months 1–6: you're the primary technical presence on a greenfield initiative — making foundational architecture decisions, shaping the infrastructure setup, defining the release process and testing strategy, and working directly with business stakeholders to keep technical direction grounded in real product needs. You write production code yourself.
- Month 6 onward: you build and lead the team around what you've built — Kotlin developers, system analysts, and QA engineers — continuing to own architecture as the product moves from foundation to production at scale.
- Stay the translation layer between business and engineering throughout both phases: you set direction before the team existed, and you remain that link as it grows.
What you'll own
- Make the foundational architecture decisions for a new banking domain — made once, by you, without working around anyone else's prior choices.
- Assess and evolve the current infrastructure setup and CI/CD approach for a product starting from scratch.
- Define the release process and testing strategy from the ground up.
- Write production code in Java and Kotlin during the solo phase.
- Build and lead a mixed-discipline team of Kotlin developers, system analysts, and QA engineers from month 6 onward.
- Lead code reviews and design reviews, mentoring the team on distributed systems thinking and production ownership.
- Own delivery across the team's technical initiatives — stay hands-on rather than shifting into pure coordination.
What makes you a strong fit
- Strong commercial Java experience — must-have, not a nice-to-have.
- JVM expertise more broadly; commercial Kotlin experience valued alongside Java.
- At least 1 year of architectural or technical leadership experience — formal or de facto.
- Genuine comfort operating solo for an extended period: defining architecture, infrastructure direction, release process, and testing strategy without a team in place.
- Experience designing distributed systems and making real production-scale architectural decisions.
- Experience with PostgreSQL, AWS, Terraform, and GitLab CI/CD, or equivalent tooling.
- Ability to communicate directly and effectively with business stakeholders, not just engineers.
- English B2 or above.
How we hire
- Recruiter screening — 30 min. Mutual fit on scope, compensation, remote setup, and motivation. We'll specifically talk through what working solo for the first 3–6 months looks like in practice.
- Technical deep dive — 60 min with a senior engineer or hiring manager. Real Java and Kotlin production experience, and how you've approached architecture decisions — with or without a formal Lead title.
- Hands-on coding / pairing — 60–90 min. Commercial-grade Java fluency in a realistic setting. Non-negotiable given Java is a must-have.
- System design — 60–90 min. How you reason about distributed systems and greenfield architecture — designing something new is a different skill than evolving something inherited.
- Leadership & autonomy interview — 45–60 min with the hiring manager or a peer lead. Technical leadership potential and genuine comfort operating alone for an extended period, plus how you'd approach building a team from scratch.
- Final interview — 30–45 min with a senior stakeholder. Alignment on scope, expectations, and the solo-then-team trajectory.
What we offer
- Hybrid-first. Fully remote for eligible roles. Core hours 13:00–19:00 Manila time (UTC+8).
- Stock option plan: 4-year vesting.
- 22 vacation days + Philippine public holidays + 15 sick days.
- Medical insurance for you and your family, starting day one. Access to an internal psychological support specialist.
- Office in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), Manila.
- Company-provided tools and equipment.
- Relocation support (If applicable): flights and two weeks of accommodation for you, your family, and your pets. Visa, paperwork, logistics: handled.
- Regular offsites, sports, and team events across Southeast Asia. Top-performing teams earn a beach house week around SEA.
- Professional development: internal expert meetups, external conferences, and opportunities to publish articles and share expertise.
Everyone is Welcome
At Salmon, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive workplace. We welcome applicants of every race, color, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, and background.
What matters most to us is your talent, experience, and the impact you can make.
Need an Accommodation?
If you need any adjustments or accommodations during the interview process, let us know. We're committed to making our hiring process accessible and comfortable for every candidate.
