Senior Software Engineer

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Madeira office (onsite)

Description

Tracer, the leader in brand protection, enhances the customer experience of corporate brands by eliminating brand misuse and fraud across the modern, digital universe. Visit www.tracer.ai for more information.
Tracer is seeking an experienced and highly motivated Senior Software Engineer to join our growing team in our Madeira, Portugal office. This position is a key contributor to our engineering team, responsible for building and scaling our core services and mentoring other engineers. This position will be onsite in the office to collaborate directly with the team and will report to the Director of Engineering.

Key duties

• Lead the technical direction and architecture of our software solutions, ensuring they are scalable, performant, and reliable.
• Mentor and coach junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.
• Collaborate closely with product managers and designers to translate business requirements into well-defined technical specifications and solutions.
• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality backend services using Java/Kotlin and the Spring Boot framework.
• Conduct thorough code reviews to ensure code quality, maintainability, and adherence to best practices.
• Act as a subject matter expert for the team, providing guidance and troubleshooting complex technical issues.
• Assist in the development and enforcement of coding standards and best practices for the engineering team.
• Help define and improve our development processes, including CI/CD pipelines and testing strategies.

Work Conditions

This is a full-time, on-site role in our Madeira, Portugal office. The work schedule is generally Monday-Friday from 9am to 6pm. Although this is an on-site position, there is flexibility for a hybrid schedule of up to two days remote work per week. Applicants should be currently located in Madeira or relocating to Madeira in the next 3 months. Tracer will not provide relocation assistance for this role.

Benefits

This role is eligible for a competitive benefits package that includes: health insurance, paid time off, paid holidays, parental leave, a Coverflex Card, professional development, and our "Flex Friday" program. Flex Friday gives you the ability to focus on work with no internal meetings every Friday, plus the ability to take 1 Friday off every month.

At Tracer, we strive to build a flexible environment and diverse community working towards our common company goals in a safe and collaborative environment where harassment of any kind is strictly prohibited. Tracer is committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

Requirements

The Senior Software Engineer will be a key leader on the development team, responsible for driving technical excellence and mentoring other engineers. This role requires a combination of deep backend expertise, architectural vision, and hands-on coding ability to build and scale our core services.

Must Haves

• Proven experience in a senior or lead role within a software development environment.
• Extensive experience with Java and/or Kotlin and deep expertise with the Spring Boot framework.
• Demonstrated ability to design and build scalable, distributed systems and microservices.
• Strong understanding of software design patterns, data structures, and algorithms.
• Proficiency with relational and/or NoSQL databases.
• Experience in a leadership or mentorship capacity, guiding the technical growth of other engineers.
• Solid understanding of modern software development practices, including CI/CD, unit testing, and Git workflows.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).

Nice to Haves

• Proficiency in modern frontend frameworks, such as React, and full-stack development experience.
• Backend experience utilizing JavaScript and/or Python.
• Strong comprehension of cloud-native architecture and experience with cloud providers like Azure, GCP, or AWS.
• Practical experience with orchestration platforms like Kubernetes and containerization via Docker.
• Understanding of message queues (such as Kafka or RabbitMQ) and asynchronous programming patterns.
• Extensive experience with scraping frameworks and tools (e.g., Playwright, Selenium, Puppeteer, or Jsoup).
• Deep knowledge of HTTP protocols, DOM manipulation, and browser rendering.
• Experience managing Proxy networks and bypassing anti-scraping services (Cloudflare, Akamai, etc.).
• Familiarity with automation tools and frameworks, including Puppeteer, Selenium, or Playwright.
• Competency in browser rendering, DOM manipulation, and HTTP protocols.
• Experience in circumventing anti-scraping technologies (such as Akamai or Cloudflare) and managing proxy networks.