Software Engineer

Role & responsibilities

Must-Have Skills (Non-Negotiable):

• Several years of hands-on experience developing backend services on Microsoft Azure, especially Azure App Services / Web Apps and Azure Functions
• Strong proficiency in C# / .NET for building scalable, maintainable, and testable backend APIs
• Proven experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs (request/response design, versioning, error handling)
• Practical experience operating production systems: monitoring, incident handling, troubleshooting, and performance optimization
• Strong focus on code quality, clean architecture, and secure coding practices
• Experience working in agile development teams (Scrum/Kanban) using Git-based workflows and pull requests

Core Technical Requirements:

• Advanced proficiency in C# / .NET for cloud-native development (e.g. or newer)
• Hands-on experience with Azure Functions (HTTP triggers, timer triggers, queues/topics, bindings) and Azure App Services
• Solid experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaaC), e.g. using Bicep, ARM templates, Terraform, or similar, to provision and manage Azure resources
• Experience with Azure DevOps for CI/CD (build and release pipelines, YAML pipelines, artifact management)
• Experience implementing authentication & authorization (e.g. Azure AD / Entra ID, OAuth2/OIDC, role-based access)
• Hands-on experience with logging, monitoring, and diagnostics using Azure Application Insights and related tooling
• Familiarity with automated testing (unit, integration, and API tests) integrated into the CI/CD pipeline
• Knowledge of Azure data services (e.g. Storage, SQL) is helpful but not required

Broader Responsibilities the Candidate Will Own:

• Design, implementation, and maintenance of central backend services for software licensing used across ZEISS business units
• End-to-end ownership of services over their full lifecycle: development, deployment, monitoring, incident handling, and continuous improvement
• Implementation and maintenance of Infrastructure as Code for backend services and related Azure resources
• Collaboration with architects, client engineers (C++ / C#), and the React portal team to ensure consistent end-to-end flows for licensing use cases
• Definition and implementation of non-functional requirements (security, reliability, scalability, performance, observability) for backend services
• Continuous optimization and automation of build, test, and deployment pipelines in Azure DevOps
• Participation in on-call / incident processes as required, including root-cause analysis and long-term remediation
• Contribution to architecture decisions, coding standards, and documentation within the backend and platform teams

Basic Requirements:

• University degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a comparable qualification
• Typically, 2 years of professional experience as a backend or cloud engineer on the Microsoft stack
• Proven experience delivering and operating Azure-based backend solutions in a professional environment
• Experience working in international, cross-functional teams within corporate IT or product development
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a structured, proactive, and reliable working style
• Good communication skills in English, both written and spoken

Solid understanding of:

• Cloud-native backend architectures on Azure (microservices, serverless, APIs, integration patterns)
• REST API design principles, including authentication, authorization, error handling, and versioning
• DevOps concepts and CI/CD practices with Azure DevOps (pipelines, environments, approvals, rollback strategies)
• Infrastructure as Code principles (idempotency, modularization, environments, reviewable changes) and their application in Azure
• Security and compliance requirements in enterprise environments (identity and access management, secrets management, data protection)
• Observability practices (logging, metrics, tracing, dashboards, alerting) for production systems
• Resilience and reliability patterns (retry, circuit breaker, timeouts, graceful degradation) in distributed systems
• Collaboration with Business Analysts and other stakeholders to translate requirements into robust backend solutions
• Basic understanding of software licensing concepts and workflows is a plus