Software Development Engineer-3 Backend (3-6 months Contract to hire role)

Software Development Engineer – 3 (Backend)

Who We Are

We’re Locus. We move the world’s goods.

Our algorithms have optimized over 1 billion deliveries. We’re the enterprise TMS trusted by IKEA, Unilever, UPS and some of the largest supply chains on the planet. Backed by Ingka Group (IKEA’s parent), we’re building a composable, multi-modal transportation management system that’s redefining logistics technology.

We’re not hiring to fill seats. We’re hiring builders who build for other builders.

What You’ll Do

You own the backend end to end. Design doc to deployment. Production to on-call. Here’s what that looks like day to day:

Architect and ship backend systems that run in production at enterprise scale.

Build fault-tolerant services with clear SLIs/SLOs, strong observability, and predictable performance.

Drive design and implementation for microservices and distributed workflows messaging, async processing, retries, idempotency.

Work closely with a team both Biological and Digital comprising Product, Frontend, QA/SDET, DevOps/SRE, and Data teams to turn business requirements into robust systems.

Raise engineering standards through design reviews, code reviews, and operational best practices.

Mentor junior engineers and lead by example on craft, ownership, and execution.

What You Bring

Must-Haves

5+ years building production backend systems SaaS or product environments preferred.

Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, concurrency, reliability, and scalability.

Deep experience with Java, Spring / Spring Boot preferred.

Proven track record designing and building REST APIs and microservices.

Working knowledge across the stack: relational + NoSQL databases, messaging (Kafka/RabbitMQ), caching (Redis/Memcached).

Strong debugging instincts, you resolve complex production issues with clarity and ownership.

Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) and modern practices: CI/CD, automated testing, observability.

Track record of shipping and coding and not just planning.

Strong Signals - We Actively Look for These

Degrees don’t tell us much. These do:

You’ve built something on your own time, open source, side project, internal tool.

You’ve contributed to a top open-source project.

You’ve filed a patent or published research.

You’ve written technical content others reference, or spoken at a conference.

You’ve competed in or completed something grueling, ultra-marathon, Ironman, competitive programming, hackathon wins.

We don’t fill seats. We hire builders who build for other builders.

What We Don’t Care About

Which college you went to. Seriously.

Whether your resume has Big Tech logos.

How many years you’ve held exactly this job title.

We care about what you built, why you couldn’t stop, and how you think.

The Stack

Languages: Java, Kotlin, Python, TypeScript,Spring / Spring Boot

Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch

Data / ML: Spark, Airflow, optimization engines (routing, ETA, slotting)

Scale: 350+ deployments · 30+ countries · billions of deliveries · high-volume daily computations

Why Locus is different:

This isn’t a perks list. It’s a contract between Locus and people who build.

01. Inference Compute Budget - For Builders Who Ship: Every engineer gets $5,000/year in AI/LLM inference credits, The budget is the baseline, you need more we have it for you!

02. Patent Premium - Your Name on It. Permanently: File a patent at Locus, your name stays on it for Eternity, Check our Patents and patents holders

03. Lifetime Royalty Program - Build the Builders: Build an internal tool that automates a process or makes us more efficient? Locus pays you a royalty, not just while you’re here, but even after you leave.

04. Excellence Beyond Code Ironman, ultra-marathon, national-level sport, FIDE 2000+, we see these as signals of craft, grit, and finishing. They matter to us.

05. Open Source Bounty Active contributor to a top-1000 GitHub repo? Joining bonus. Active maintainers get dedicated 20% time to keep contributing.

06. Conference Speaker Fund Accepted to speak at a global conference? We cover travel, registration, and stay. No questions asked.

07. 1 Billion Deliveries on Your Resume: You can truthfully say: “My code optimized 1B+ deliveries across 30+ countries.” We verify it.

08. Alumni Network That Doesn’t Forget You: Leaving Loc…