Senior Application Backend Engineer (Core Java) (Remote - United Kingdom) in Birmingham

Yelp engineering culture is driven by our values: we’re a cooperative team that values individual authenticity and encourages creative solutions to problems. All new engineers deploy working code their first week, and we strive to broaden individual impact with support from managers, mentors, and teams. At the end of the day, we’re all about helping our users, growing as engineers, and having fun in a collaborative environment.

As a remote backend engineer, you’ll work closely with our mobile and web application developers to bring our 200M+ reviews to millions of users. The Core Java team empowers our Yelp Java community by equipping them with productivity tools, libraries and best practices. This impactful work enables our service authors to develop quickly, whilst writing high quality, performant and maintainable code in Java (and Scala, Kotlin).

This opportunity requires you to be located in the United Kingdom. We’d love to have you apply, even if you don’t feel you meet every single requirement in this posting. At Yelp, we’re looking for great people, not just those who simply check off all the boxes.

What You’ll Do

• Build and maintain tools for developing and testing Java services and system packages on the JVM.
• Further enrich and streamline the Java developer experience, including debugging, profiling, and code optimization utilities.
• Collaborate with team members and engineers across the company to design elegant systems.
• Creating and maintaining standards and libraries to facilitate robust communication between services.
• Articulate a technical vision and execute it.
• Learn from, and work closely with, more experienced engineers, sharing skills and knowledge as you grow in your role.

What It Takes To Succeed

• Highly proficient in Java, Scala and/or Kotlin.
• Previous hands‑on experience with building and maintaining tools and libraries.
• You are able to coordinate and work with multiple teams and stakeholders to execute on high‑impact projects.
• You have demonstrated the ability to design, build and roll out future‑proof productivity tools across a medium to large organization.
• Great understanding of Linux, databases, Service‑oriented Architecture and Maven/Gradle.
• Ability to iterate quickly using Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment principles.
• You’re excited about the challenges of scalability, reliability, and performance.

What You’ll Get

• Full responsibility for projects from day one, a collaborative team, and a dynamic work environment.
• Competitive salary, a pension scheme, and an optional employee stock purchase plan.
• 25 days paid holiday (rising to 29 with service), plus one floating holiday.
• £150 monthly reimbursement to help cover remote working expenses.
• £75 caregiver reimbursement to support dependent care for families.
• Private health insurance, including dental and vision.
• Flexible working hours and meeting‑free Wednesdays.
• Regular 3‑day Hackathons, bi‑weekly learning groups, and productivity spending to support and encourage your career growth.
• Opportunities to participate in digital events and conferences.
• £75 per month to use toward qualifying wellness expenses.
• Quarterly team offsites.

Yelp values diversity. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, medical condition, disability, or any other protected status.

Notice to Northern Ireland Applicants

A Basic criminal background check via AccessNI is required for employment. Yelp complies with the AccessNI Code of Practice. Having a criminal record will not necessarily prevent a candidate from working with Yelp. Yelp will consider the nature of the position together with the circumstances and background of the candidate’s offences or other information contained on a disclosure certificate.

Note: Yelp does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to any recruiting alias or employee. Yelp is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.