We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Java Technical Leader to lead and grow a team of Software Engineers delivering scalable, secure, and high-quality backend systems.
In this role, you will combine strong Java architecture expertise, technical leadership, and modern engineering practices, including effective use of AI-assisted tools to improve productivity, quality, and decision-making.
You will work closely with international stakeholders, take end-to-end ownership of technical outcomes, and foster a culture of engineering excellence, continuous learning, and smart adoption of new technologies.
Technical & Team Leadership
Lead, mentor, and coach a team of Software Engineers, supporting their technical growth and career development.
Act as a hands-on technical leader, setting coding standards, architectural principles, and best practices.
Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and learning-oriented team culture with strong ownership and accountability.
Guide engineers on effective and responsible use of AI tools to enhance daily engineering work (e.g., design, coding, debugging, testing, documentation).
Proactively identify, troubleshoot, and resolve complex performance or scalability issues.
Work closely with DevOps/SRE teams to improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment reliability, and runtime stability.
Drive improvements in system observability, monitoring, and alerting.
Ensure high standards of code quality through design reviews, code reviews, automated testing, and documentation.
Design, develop, and review robust Java-based systems using Spring ecosystem and microservices architecture.
Global Collaboration
Work effectively with cross-functional and international teams (e.g., UK, US).
Communicate complex technical topics clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
AI-Augmented Engineering (Big Plus)
Leverage AI-assisted developer tools (e.g., for code generation, refactoring, test creation, log analysis, incident triage, and documentation) to:
Improve development speed without compromising quality
Reduce repetitive manual work
Support faster debugging and root-cause analysis
Promote best practices for AI usage, including validation of outputs, security awareness, and IP safety.
Explore and propose practical AI use cases in backend engineering, and system observability.
Core Java & Backend Expertise
Strong expertise in Java, including OOP, multithreading, concurrency, collections, and performance tuning.
Hands-on experience with Spring / Spring Boot, Spring Data, Dependency Injection (DI), and transaction management.
Solid experience designing and building RESTful APIs and distributed microservices architectures.
Experience with SQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) and NoSQL solutions (e.g., MongoDB, DynamoDB).
Strong understanding of data modeling, query optimization, and backend performance tuning.
Hands-on experience with AWS (e.g., EKS, S3, RDS, Lambda).
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices.
Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools such as DataDog for metrics, logs, and traces.
Ways of Working
Proficient with GitLab for version control and collaboration.
Experience working in Agile / Scrum environments.
Strong problem-solving skills and ability to make sound technical decisions under constraints.
Bonus / Differentiators
Proven experience using AI tools in daily engineering work (coding, debugging, testing, design, or operations).
Ability to mentor others on productive and responsible AI usage.
Familiarity with Kubernetes (K8s): containerization, deployment, scaling, and service-to-service communication.
Strong spoken and written English for international collaboration
Skills Required
- Strong expertise in Java, including object-oriented programming, multithreading, concurrency, collections, and performance tuning
- Hands-on experience with Spring, Spring Boot, Spring Data, dependency injection, and transaction management
- Experience designing and building RESTful APIs and distributed microservices architectures
- Experience with SQL databases such as PostgreSQL and NoSQL solutions such as MongoDB or DynamoDB
- Strong understanding of data modeling, query optimization, and backend performance tuning
- Hands-on experience with AWS, including EKS, S3, RDS, or Lambda
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices
- Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools such as DataDog
- Proficiency with GitLab for version control and collaboration
- Experience working in Agile or Scrum environments
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to make sound technical decisions under constraints
- Proven experience using AI tools in daily engineering work
- Ability to mentor others on productive and responsible AI usage
- Familiarity with Kubernetes for containerization, deployment, scaling, and service-to-service communication
- Strong spoken and written English for international collaboration
Yum! Brands Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Yum! Brands and has not been reviewed or approved by Yum! Brands.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — Corporate roles include four weeks of vacation, year‑round half‑day Fridays, company holidays, dedicated “Live Well” days, and paid volunteer days. These policies contribute meaningfully to overall compensation value for corporate employees.
-
Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Offerings include free access to mental‑health counselors, onsite/virtual wellness tools, onsite gyms in select offices, and wellbeing discounts. Smoking‑cessation and weight‑management programs further bolster lifestyle support.
-
Parental & Family Support — Benefits span family‑planning coverage such as adoption, fertility, and baby‑bonding leave. Corporate materials also note enhanced parental leave for U.S. corporate employees.
Yum! Brands Insights
What We Do
Yum! Brands, Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky, and its subsidiaries franchise or operate a system of over 55,000 restaurants in more than 155 countries and territories under the Company’s concepts – KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and the Habit Burger Grill. The Company's KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut brands are global leaders of the chicken, Mexican-style food, and pizza categories, respectively. The Habit Burger Grill is a fast casual restaurant concept specializing in made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches and more. What makes Yum! a great place to work? It's our people. As the world's largest restaurant company, we invest in people capability so that our global workforce can make the most of their careers. With ongoing opportunities for personal and professional success, we've built a culture that rewards and recognizes great effort while providing the flexibility that is so important to all of us.
