Senior Backend Engineer

About the role:

At Holland & Barrett, we're on a mission to make health and wellness a way of life for everyone – and technology is at the heart of how we make that happen. As we continue our journey to become a leading omni-channel retailer, we're investing heavily in innovative tech to deliver faster, more personalised, and more convenient experiences for our customers – both online and in-store.

We're collaborative, customer-obsessed, and love working at pace. We embrace cloud-first principles, build solutions tailored to our business (rather than buying off-the-shelf), and embed automation and testing across everything we do – from software to infrastructure and data.

This role sits within our Online Customer Experience (OCX) vertical – the team driving our e-commerce platforms across web and mobile. We're wrapping up a multi-year technical transformation and moving into an exciting new phase: building fresh, customer-first digital propositions that bring our wellness mission to life.

You'll join a talented engineering team working on meaningful, customer-facing products that have real impact. If you're a proactive problem-solver, passionate about clean code and modern architecture, and keen to mentor others, we'd love to hear from you.

What You'll Be Doing

• Independently deliver high-quality, cross-functional software with minimal oversight

• Collaborate with product and delivery teams to drive features from idea to launch

• Work closely with stakeholders across departments to ensure timely project delivery

• Contribute to the product roadmap, helping shape the future of our digital experience

• Monitor systems and take a proactive approach to identifying and resolving critical issues

• Mentor junior engineers and support their technical growth

• Share new techniques, encourage knowledge exchange, and help us raise the engineering bar

• Communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences

Key requirements:

Essential Skills:

• Strong experience with Java (17+) and frameworks like Spring Boot, Quarkus, or Micronaut

• Deep understanding of RESTful APIs and HTTP as an architectural style

• Expertise in asynchronous programming in Java

• Solid SQL skills and experience with Postgres or Oracle

• Comfortable working with Docker and docker-compose

• Exposure to AWS services such as S3, Aurora, and ElasticCache

• Familiarity with modern CI/CD platforms – ideally GitLab, but GitHub Actions or CircleCI also welcome

• Proficiency in testing frameworks like JUnit and RestAssured

• A passion for monitoring, observability, and maintaining resilient systems

Desirable Skills:

• Experience with monitoring and alerting tools like Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, or PagerDuty

• Exposure to Python scripting

• Familiarity with deployment platforms such as Kubernetes and tools like Helm

Why Join H&B Tech?

• Be part of a fast-moving, forward-thinking team at the forefront of digital retail

• Work in a supportive, inclusive environment that encourages learning and growth

• Enjoy flexible working, competitive benefits, and the opportunity to shape the future of health & wellness tech

Ready to build something better, together?Apply now and help us shape the future of wellness.

What we offer:

• Pension company contribution = 3%
• Incentive scheme up to 10% of annual salary, based on company performance.
• Your wellbeing is paramount so you can get away and take 33 Days Holiday per year.
• Learning and Development opportunity with Holland & Barrett is a great base for career development long term.
• Private Medical Care (Self after 1 year)
• Career progression.
• Refer and Earn Scheme - as we're growing you can earn money by referring people to join us from your network.
• Epic Extras gives you access to exclusive benefits, free advice and savings from a range of retailers and providers.
• Stay healthy with Discounted Products - from day one you'll get a 25% discount (on top of other promotions) when you shop at H&B on anything that you buy.
• We all need a little help sometimes, so weoffer Free 24/7 Confidential Advice & Colleague Welfare.
• Mental Health First Aiders - we have lots of qualified Mental Health First Aiders because its all about your health & wellbeing.
• Stay active in the Onsite Gym at our Nuneaton Hub!
• We have colleague Reward and Recognition Schemes, so your hard work and loyalty won't go unnoticed.
• And many more!

Our culture respects equality, values diversity and encourages individuality – because this allows our people to unlock their potential and be their best. We welcome everyone who shares our EPIC values regardless of background, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation

Holland & Barrett does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Please do not forward resumes to our job alias, employees, or any other company location. Holland & Barrett is not and will not be responsible for any fees if a candidate submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless otherwise agreed with respect to specific open position(s).