Senior Software Engineer (5) | Java Platform Team

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Mission

The Java Platform Team is shifting from "best effort" support to a fully managed, curated "Paved Path" for the entire Netflix ecosystem. To scale this mission globally, we’re building a new Java Subject Matter Expert (SME) hub in Poland.

While you will be hired into the centralized Java Platform organization, we are recruiting for two distinct focus areas. During the process, we will help assess which track aligns best with your expertise.

Framework Lifecycle Management (FLM)

"The Ecosystem Guardians" This team manages the "Paved Path" for thousands of microservices. Your focus is on the massive Spring Boot ecosystem, ensuring that upgrades, security patches, and library integrations happen seamlessly — so that thousands of engineers can stay secure and up-to-date without extra work. You build the tooling that allows fleet-wide changes to happen automatically, removing the burden of maintenance from engineers.

Lightweight Java Frameworks (Java Lite)

"The Performance Architects" This team focuses on the high-performance, resource-constrained edge of our infrastructure. You build sidecars, agents, and lightweight libraries that run where a full Spring Boot context is too heavy — for example, service mesh sidecars, observability agents, or edge services. Your focus is on raw JVM performance, startup time, low memory footprint, and architectural patterns for sidecar processes.

Key Responsibilities (Across Both Teams)

Regardless of the specific team, your goal is "Zero Toil" for our developers — in practice, this means that most platform upgrades and ecosystem changes happen automatically, without manual intervention from application teams.

• Engineer the "Zero-Disruption" Pipeline: Design and scale end-to-end integration and regression testing frameworks so that platform changes can be rolled out safely and predictably, with minimal impact on application teams and customers.

• Automate the Ecosystem: Build sophisticated tooling for automated code refactoring (e.g., OpenRewrite) and build/PR linting. You enable the fleet to stay current with minimal manual intervention.

• Drive Language-Agnostic Standards: Partner across the organization to establish standards for gRPC, service mesh, and metrics, ensuring our Java stack plays perfectly within the polyglot Netflix ecosystem.

• Scale the Fleet: Manage the complex Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for shared libraries and services, balancing technical evolution with stability.

Who You Are

• Experienced Engineer: You have previously owned or significantly contributed to shared platform components or libraries used by many teams. Typically, candidates have 6+ years of professional experience in Java and distributed systems, but we care more about impact and depth than years.

• Technical Leader: You are comfortable driving technical direction, aligning multiple stakeholders, and making pragmatic tradeoffs between stability and innovation.

• End-to-End Owner: You can lead initiatives end-to-end: from problem discovery and design through rollout, telemetry, and iterative improvement.

Core Competencies (Required for Both Teams)

We are looking for engineers who share a common set of values and foundational skills, regardless of their specialization.

• Java Language Expertise: You have strong proficiency in modern Java (17/21+). You understand the standard library, concurrency, and effective API design.

• Automation Mindset: You are committed to eliminating manual toil. You have experience building developer tools (linters, CLI tools, testing frameworks) that improve the lives of other engineers.

• Distributed Systems Fundamentals: You understand how services talk to each other (gRPC, HTTP, Mesh) and the challenges of distributed consistency and reliability.

• Empathy & Inclusivity: You value candor and seek out diverse perspectives. You recognize that the tools you build must empower every engineer at Netflix, not just the experts.

Specialized Tracks