Software Engineer - Java/Kotlin | Backend | Integrations Manchester (Hybrid - 2 days per week) | 6 month initial contract | £500-600pd inside IR35 | Immediate start A leading global digital platform is building a brand-new engineering team focused on transforming how third-party integrations are delivered at scale. This team sits at the centre of a major growth area and is rethinking how external providers connect into a marketplace ecosystem, reducing onboarding from months to days through smarter architecture, automation and AI-enabled engineering practices. We're looking for Software Engineers with strong backend engineering and automated testing experience to help shape this capability from the ground up. The Opportunity: Joining a newly established team, you'll work on building and scaling connectivity services that integrate with external APIs and suppliers. You'll contribute to a platform designed to simplify onboarding, improve reliability and create reusable integration patterns across a rapidly growing ecosystem. You'll work in a highly collaborative environment with Product, Commercial and Operations teams and help influence engineering standards, tooling and ways of working from day one. What you'll be doing: Designing and developing backend services using Java and/or Kotlin Building and evolving REST APIs and integration services Creating scalable, reusable connectors for third-party providers Working with external APIs that cannot be directly controlled or changed Driving strong engineering standards with a focus on automated testing Supporting observability and operational excellence through logging, metrics and alerting Contributing to cloud-native deployments and modern CI/CD practices Helping shape repositories, tooling and engineering processes with AI-enabled development approaches Collaborating cross-functionally to improve provider onboarding and operational efficiency What we're looking for: Strong backend engineering experience in Java and/or Kotlin Experience building and operating production services Strong capability in automated testing and test frameworks Experience integrating with REST/HTTP APIs and external systems Good understanding of distributed systems principles including: retries idempotency timeouts resilience patterns Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines Cloud exposure (AWS preferred) Experience with relational databases (MySQL or similar) Exposure to Kafka, messaging technologies or event-driven architectures Comfortable working in collaborative, fast-moving environments Nice to have: Experience within travel, marketplaces, ticketing, attractions or consumer platforms Experience building integration platforms or connectivity products Experience working in early-stage teams or helping establish engineering practices Interest in AI-assisted development and engineering productivity If you enjoy backend engineering, solving integration challenges and building scalable platforms from the ground up, we'd love to speak with you.