Java Engineer (with readiness to switch to Kotlin)

🌍 Remote | UTC+8 | Core collaboration hours: 13:00–7:00 PM Manila Time

Salmon is a technology-driven financial company building a banking and lending platform across Southeast Asia, starting in the Philippines.

We combine global fintech expertise with deep local market knowledge to make financial services simple, accessible, and useful for millions of people across the region.

7M+ app downloads. 2M+ monthly active users. 7,000+ partner stores. US$310M+ raised from leading global investors.

Manila-based, globally distributed, and hybrid-first — our team spans 45+ countries.

If you want to solve complex problems at scale and impact how millions of people access and manage money, come build with us.

Southeast Asia's fintech moment starts here.

About the role:

You'll design, build, and scale the core banking and partner platforms behind Salmon's products — the APIs, integrations, and shared components other engineering teams build on.

What you'll do:

• Work on high-load, mission-critical systems where reliability directly affects live banking and lending products
• Build on a modern JVM stack — Kotlin, Ktor, jOOQ, coroutines, Arrow — running in Docker and Kubernetes on AWS
• Influence architectural decisions on shared platform components used across the company

What you'll own:

• Design and evolve banking APIs for mobile applications and internal and external services
• Build scalable backend services in Kotlin and modern JVM technologies
• Develop public APIs, internal SDKs, and shared platform components other teams depend on
• Implement high-performance integrations with partners and third-party systems
• Contribute to the architecture, scalability, and reliability of the core banking and partner platforms

What makes you a strong fit:

• 5+ years in the JVM ecosystem, with strong expertise in Kotlin or Java
• Deep understanding of concurrency and asynchronous programming
• Experience designing systems with clean architectures — DDD and event-driven approaches
• Solid knowledge of distributed systems and their trade-offs
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes, preferably in an AWS environment
• Readiness to work primarily in Kotlin

What we offer:

Ownership and flexibility

• Stock option plan — four-year vesting with a 25% cliff after the first year
• Fully remote work with core collaboration hours from 13:00 to 7:00 PM Manila time (UTC+8)
• Company-provided tools and equipment

Health and time off

• Medical insurance support for you and your family through co-funding or reimbursement, depending on your location and subject to policy limits
• Access to an internal mental health support specialist
• 22 vacation days, Philippine public holidays, and 15 sick days

Growth and team experience

• Opportunities to learn and share your expertise through internal expert meetups, external conferences, speaking opportunities, and industry publications
• Company-sponsored trips to Manila to meet and work with your team in person
• High-performing teams can earn a dedicated beach house week in Southeast Asia

We believe strong teams are built by people with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. Salmon is an equal opportunity employer, and we make hiring decisions based on skills, experience, and potential.