Information about This Engagement:
This is a hybrid contract role. W2 candidates are preferred; however, we are open to engaging subcontractors with local resources who are physically located in Minneapolis/St Paul Metro and able to work onsite at the client’s location.

Location: Minneapolis South Metro (Local preferred; remote candidates will be considered)

Engagement Type: Contract | Hybrid (1–2 days onsite weekly, Thursdays required)

About the Opportunity

VALERE is seeking a Senior Backend Developer for a long term, contract position with our large enterprise, E-commerce Client.
This role sits within a high-impact retail media and advertising technology organization focused on building and scaling their Advertising platform used by sellers and internal teams to create, manage, and optimize advertising campaigns across a major digital retail ecosystem. The team owns critical systems supporting sponsored products, onsite display advertising, campaign management, bidding, reporting, billing integrations, and seller-facing experiences.

Why You'll Love This Role

• Work on highly scalable advertising and retail media platforms supporting enterprise-level traffic and transactions

• Build modern event-driven microservices powering campaign management, reporting, and billing systems

• Partner with cross-functional engineering teams on cloud-native architecture modernization initiatives

• Contribute to systems that directly impact seller experiences and advertising performance across digital channels

• Operate in a collaborative engineering environment with strong ownership and autonomy

What You'll Do

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend microservices and APIs for advertising and campaign management platforms

• Build and enhance seller-facing campaign management workflows and synchronization systems

• Integrate backend services with external advertising platforms, ad-serving systems, and billing pipelines

• Develop event-driven architectures leveraging Kafka and asynchronous processing patterns

• Optimize distributed systems for scalability, reliability, and high-throughput processing

• Improve reporting, spend tracking, and product eligibility systems across the advertising ecosystem
  Contribute to cloud-native application deployment and CI/CD modernization efforts
  Troubleshoot complex production issues and improve monitoring, observability, and system reliability
  Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and platform teams to deliver scalable backend solutions
  Independently own backend services and features from design through deployment and production support

What You Bring

• 7–10 years of backend software engineering experience

• Strong expertise in Java and/or Kotlin development

• Deep experience with Spring Boot and WebFlux

• Strong background building microservices and REST APIs

• Experience with Kafka and event-driven architectures

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and asynchronous processing

• Advanced SQL skills with PostgreSQL and/or MySQL performance optimization experience

• Experience with Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native application development

• Strong production support, monitoring, and observability experience

• Excellent debugging, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills

• Ability to independently own services and features end-to-end

• Strong collaboration and cross-functional communication skills

• Experience building scalable, high-throughput backend systems

Preferred/Nice to Have: AdTech experience, BigQuery/GCP knowledge, reactive programming, and AI-assisted development tools experience

Pay Rate: This is a contract role with an hourly rate range of $60–$65 hour.
Your specific rate will depend on your qualifications, education, certifications, location, and how well your experience aligns with the client's requirements.
Benefits: We offer a comprehensive benefits package to our W2 Employees including Medical, Dental, Vision, Health Savings Account, Life Insurance, 401k and Sick Pay where applicable by state law.
A bit about us: We are a woman-owned/woman-run business based in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. We are dedicated to placing talented consultants with top-tier clients. Our commitment to excellence and personalized service sets us apart in the industry.
We welcome diversity: At VALERE, we know that when people from different backgrounds and perspectives come together, amazing things happen. We strive to create a workplace where every employee, candidate, and client feels valued, respected, and empowered to reach their full potential. We actively work to dismantle barriers that prevent underrepresented groups from thriving in Tech, UX, and Product careers. No matter your race, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability – we welcome you.