(Senior) Product Engineer (Backend) (m/f/d)

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a (Senior) Product Engineer (Backend) (m/f/d) based in Italy. Join a product-focused engineering team building AI-powered experiences for frontline employees across retail, manufacturing, and logistics. You will take deep ownership of backend systems while staying connected to the complete user journey and product experience. The role combines backend engineering, SaaS development, product thinking, and practical use of AI-powered development tools. You will work closely with product managers, designers, and engineers across backend, frontend, mobile, and AI. Rather than simply implementing predefined tickets, you will help understand user problems, shape solutions, prototype ideas, and measure their impact. The environment values curiosity, adaptability, engineering judgment, and continuous learning as software development evolves through AI. You will have the support and autonomy to expand your technical scope while becoming an increasingly product-minded, AI-enabled engineer. Accountabilities: - Design, develop, and maintain reliable and scalable backend services for SaaS products. - Build APIs, data models, integrations, and other backend capabilities using Kotlin or Java and modern web frameworks. - Take ownership of features from problem discovery and prototyping through development, rollout, and impact measurement. - Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and engineers across backend, frontend, mobile, and AI. - Extend beyond backend development when needed, contributing to web, mobile, infrastructure, or other areas to deliver complete product experiences. - Use AI coding assistants and modern development tools to explore unfamiliar codebases, accelerate development, and make well-structured cross-stack changes. - Focus on user outcomes rather than simply completing predefined technical tickets, using conversations, prototypes, instrumentation, and experimentation to validate ideas. - Contribute to technical decisions, engineering practices, code quality, and scalable product architecture.

- Participate in an evolving engineering culture focused on end-to-end ownership, rapid experimentation, and continuous improvement. Requirements: - Professional experience in backend software engineering, with openness to candidates ranging from a few years of experience to senior-level engineers. - Strong hands-on experience with Kotlin or Java and a web framework such as Micronaut or Spring. - Experience developing SaaS products, ideally in an Agile or cross-functional product environment. - Strong backend engineering fundamentals combined with an interest in contributing outside the backend stack when a product feature requires it. - Familiarity with AI-powered coding assistants such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar tools, or a strong willingness to adopt them. - A product-minded approach, with the ability to understand user problems, evaluate potential solutions, and take ownership through delivery and rollout. - Strong curiosity, adaptability, communication skills, and engineering judgment. - Ability to collaborate effectively with product managers, designers, and engineers across multiple technical disciplines. - Experience working directly from design mockups or prototypes is a plus. - Knowledge of instrumentation and experimentation tools or practices, such as A/B testing, Grafana, or Mixpanel, is advantageous. - Experience with Kubernetes and Helm is a plus. - Practical experience with PostgreSQL is beneficial. - Familiarity with messaging technologies such as RabbitMQ or Apache Kafka is advantageous. Benefits: - Remote-first working model with the flexibility to work from home. - Option to work remotely from within the European Union.