Java Software Engineer

Founded in Switzerland in 1968, Zühlke is owned by its partners and located across Europe and Asia. We are a global transformation partner, with engineering and innovation in our DNA. We're trusted to help clients envision and build their businesses for the future – to run smarter today while adapting for tomorrow’s markets, customers, and communities. Our multidisciplinary teams specialise in tech strategy and business innovation, digital solutions and applications, and device and systems engineering. We excel in complex, regulated spaces including health and finance, connecting strategy, tech implementation, and operational services to help clients become more effective, resilient businesses.

If you share our values and want to do the best work, for the right reasons, we can offer you the chance to do it on a global scale and play a real role in shaping our exciting journey.

The Role

We are looking for a Java Software Engineer to join a small, senior team building a business-critical product for a Swiss client. You will work on backend services alongside four colleagues split between our Belgrade office and Zurich.

This is a backend-focused engineering role on a deliberately modern stack. The team is small enough that your decisions matter and you will see them in production and the engagement is a long-running product build rather than a series of short projects, so you get to live with the consequences of your architecture and improve it over time.

The team works with Quarkus, a container-first JVM framework built for fast startup and a low memory footprint. Experience with it is welcome but not expected. If you are a strong Spring Boot engineer, that is exactly the background we are looking for. The two frameworks are close relatives and we expect a capable engineer to make the transition quickly. What matters to us is engineering quality, curiosity and the appetite to pick up something new.

How you'll make an impact

• You will design, build and maintain reliable JVM backend services and well-structured APIs that the product depends on.

• You will solve genuinely complex technical problems, in a domain where correctness matters and shortcuts surface later.

• You will work as one team across Belgrade and Zurich, and directly with the client.

• You will contribute to event-driven workflows and asynchronous processing as the system grows.

• You will apply test-first and test-informed practices and hold a high bar for readability and maintainability.

• You will share what you know and stay curious and open-minded while standing by your ideas.

What is important to us

• You have a technical degree and/or equivalent professional qualification.

• You have 3+ years of professional Java experience and a strong command of the modern JVM ecosystem.

• You have solid hands-on experience with Spring Boot, or another modern JVM framework, and are comfortable moving between them.

• You apply architectural and design patterns with a focus on quality, readability and maintainability.

• You have practical experience working in an agile team and a good grasp of the concepts behind it.

• You communicate well, work openly with colleagues and clients and are comfortable being challenged and challenging back.

• You are fluent in English, written and spoken.

• You are based in Serbia and able to work from our Belgrade office.

Nice to have

• Quarkus - the framework this team builds on. Any exposure, professional or personal, is a real advantage.

• GraalVM and native compilation - closely tied to how Quarkus is used here.

• Apache Kafka or comparable event-streaming experience.

• Experience working with containers

• Cloud-native architectures, containerised deployment and CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience on long-lived product codebases rather than short-cycle project work.

What we offer

• Work life blend: a safe and healthy workplace, flexible working hours and the possibility to work from home.

• Profit share scheme: in addition to your annual salary, you may receive a profit share defined by the company's success in the previous year.

• Global and diverse Zühlke community: colleagues from all our 17 offices across the globe come together to create a unique, positive and inclusive work culture, learning from one another at annual team camps and celebrating year-end parties and other local festivities.

• Committed to development: we are committed to the growth of our people and are investing in your development. We're empowering you to build the skills you need to make a positive impact, both personally and for our clients, today and in the future.

For benefits that we offer please go to this this link.

How to Apply 

• Please note: Applications must be submitted in English.

If you feel you don't meet all the requirements, we are still happy to get to know you, learn more about your ambitions and ideas and look forward to receiving your application!  

We welcome people from all backgrounds, regardless of their gender, personality, national origin, race, religion, colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, disability or veteran status.