Java Workflow Engine Developer

Location: Oakville, Ontario - Hybrid

Employment Type: Contract to hire

Contract duration: 1 year

Experience Level: Intermediate to Senior

Who Are You?

You are a highly skilled Java Backend Developer with strong experience building enterprise-grade workflow-driven applications. You understand that workflow systems are far more complex than traditional CRUD applications and require careful management of process state, transaction boundaries, concurrency, auditability, reliability, and performance.

You have hands-on experience working with workflow and BPM platforms such as jBPM, Camunda, Flowable, Activiti, or similar technologies. You are comfortable designing and implementing backend services that support long-running workflows, approvals, escalations, retries, exception handling, and audit requirements.

You are also comfortable leveraging modern AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar technologies to improve productivity while maintaining strong engineering judgment and code quality standards.

If this sounds like you, this could be the perfect opportunity to join a team building mission-critical enterprise applications.

Who is the Employer?

The Raise has partnered with our client, a global leader in identity and security. They are leveraging the latest technologies to deliver world-class products in the private and public sectors of finance, telecom, identity, security, retail, sports entertainment, commercial, government, and IoT. Their proprietary identity technologies are backed by the latest advancements in biometrics, cryptography, systems, data analytics, and smart devices.

As part of their continued growth, they are seeking a Java Workflow Engine Developer to help design, develop, and support mission-critical backend systems that power business-critical workflows across enterprise environments.

Position Overview

We are looking for a strong Java Backend Developer / Workflow Engine Developer to design, develop, and support mission-critical, workflow-driven backend applications.

This role requires hands-on experience building enterprise Java services using workflow/BPM engines such as jBPM, Camunda, Flowable, Activiti, or similar platforms. The ideal candidate understands backend transaction integrity, ACID principles, concurrency, multithreading, JVM performance, garbage collection, and enterprise integration patterns.

Experience in finance, insurance, banking, government, healthcare, or other workflow-heavy industries is highly preferred, especially where systems require strong auditability, reliability, state management, and transaction correctness.

The candidate should also be comfortable using modern agentic AI development tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar tools to improve productivity, analyze code, generate tests, and accelerate backend development.

Key Responsibilities

• 
  Design and develop mission-critical Java backend services for workflow-driven enterprise applications.
• Implement business workflows using jBPM, Camunda, Flowable, Activiti, or similar workflow/BPM engines.
• Model, execute, and maintain workflow processes using BPMN, decision rules, task routing, approvals, escalations, timers, and exception handling.
• Build reliable backend APIs using Java, Spring Boot, RESTful services, and WebSocket-based communication.
• Design transaction-safe backend logic with a strong understanding of ACID transactions, isolation levels, rollback behavior, locking, and consistency.
• Develop backend services that support long-running workflows, human-in-the-loop tasks, system tasks, retry logic, and audit trails.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues related to transactions, workflow state, concurrency, thread management, JVM memory, and garbage collection.
• Optimize application performance, database access, workflow execution, and JVM runtime behavior.
• Work with relational databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or similar enterprise databases.
• Collaborate with business analysts, product owners, architects, QA, and DevOps teams to translate workflow requirements into reliable backend implementation.
• Create automated tests for workflow logic, REST APIs, transaction behavior, and edge-case scenarios.
• Use Agentic AI tools such as Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar tools to assist with code analysis, implementation, test generation, documentation, and productivity improvement.
• Review AI-generated code carefully and apply strong engineering judgment before using it in production systems.

Required Qualifications

• 
  4-6 years of strong hands-on experience as a Java backend developer.
• Strong experience with Spring Boot, REST APIs, and enterprise backend service development.
• Hands-on experience with at least one workflow/BPM engine, such as:

Ø jBPM

Ø Camunda

Ø Flowable

Ø Activiti

• Apache Airflow, Temporal, or similar workflow orchestration platforms may also be relevant depending on project background.
• Strong understanding of workflow-driven application design, including process state, task assignment, escalation, retries, timers, compensation, and audit history.
• Solid understanding of ACID transactions, transaction boundaries, rollback behavior, database consistency, and distributed transaction challenges.
• Strong knowledge of multithreading, concurrency, thread pools, asynchronous processing, and synchronization issues.
• Good understanding of JVM internals, memory management, garbage collection, heap/thread dumps, and performance troubleshooting.
• Experience with relational databases and SQL.
• Experience developing and consuming REST APIs.
• Experience with WebSocket or real-time backend communication is preferred.
• Ability to work on mission-critical systems where reliability, correctness, auditability, and maintainability are essential.
• Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills.
• Good documentation and communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• 
  Experience in finance, insurance, banking, pension, claims processing, underwriting, payment processing, government case management, healthcare workflow, or other regulated workflow-heavy domains.
• Experience building systems involving approvals, reviews, adjudication, case management, claims, payment workflows, onboarding workflows, compliance workflows, or exception handling.
• Experience with BPMN 2.0, DMN, rules engines, or decision tables.
• Experience with Camunda 7 / Camunda 8, jBPM, Flowable, or Activiti in production environments.
• Experience with message-driven architecture using Kafka, RabbitMQ, JMS, ctiveMQ, or similar messaging platforms.
• Experience with Spring Security, OAuth2, JWT, IAM integration, or role-based access control.
• Experience with observability tools such as logs, metrics, traces, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, OpenTelemetry, or similar.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, Git, Maven/Gradle, and automated testing.
• Experience using GenAI or agentic development tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar tools.

GenAI / Agentic Tool Expectations

• 
  The candidate is not expected to be an AI researcher but should be comfortable using AI-assisted engineering tools as part of daily software development.
• Using Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, or similar tools to understand existing Java backend code.
• Generating first drafts of workflow services, REST APIs, unit tests, integration tests, and documentation.
• Using AI tools to analyze workflow definitions, BPMN files, service interactions, and database logic.
• Using AI to accelerate troubleshooting, refactoring, and test coverage improvement.
• Carefully reviewing, testing, and validating AI-generated code before it is merged or deployed.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a strong Java backend engineer who has worked on real enterprise workflow systems, preferably in finance, insurance, banking, or another regulated industry. They understand that workflow applications are not just simple CRUD systems. They require careful handling of process state, transaction boundaries, retries, concurrency, auditability, and production reliability.

They should be able to design and implement backend workflow services using Java and workflow engines such as jBPM or Camunda, while also being comfortable using modern AI coding tools to improve productivity.

Looking for meaningful work? We can help

Raise is an established hiring firm with over 65 years of experience. We believe strongly in making the world a better place through work, which is why we are a certified B Corporation and donate 10% of our profits to charity.

We strive to build teams that reflect the diversity of the communities we work in. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply, including people from traditionally underrepresented groups such as women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, people identifying as LGBTQ2SI, veterans, and people with visible/nonvisible disabilities.

We have a dedicated webpage for accommodations where you can learn more about what we offer, and request accommodation: https://raise.jobs/accommodations/

In order to submit candidates for roles, our clients will sometimes require personal information to confirm the identity of applicants and their legal status to work. Raise will never ask you for personal or banking information unless you have been selected for a job. If you are ever unsure about the legitimacy of this or another job posting by Raise (or have any other questions), please contact us at +1 800-567-9675 or hello@raiserecruiting.com

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