Backend Developer

Layer: Operational

Scope: Account/Project

Track: backend

Mission

Design and implement the content/platform logic — content modeling, business logic, APIs and integrations — that powers each CMS solution.

Responsibilities

• Model content types/schemas and implement backend logic per platform.
• Build and maintain integrations (APIs, services, migrations).
• Ensure the quality, performance and security of backend/platform code.
• Write unit and integration tests for backend logic.
• Collaborate with Frontend on API contracts and with DevOps on deployment/runtime needs.

Objectives by level

Level	What success looks like
Operational	Content models, APIs and integrations meet the quality bar and ship on time.

Reporting & management

• Reports to: Tech Leader
• Manages: No direct reports.

Decides vs. escalates

• Decides: Implementation details within assigned backend tasks and the agreed design.
• Escalates: Design ambiguities, blockers, and scope or estimate risks.

Requirements

Must have

• Server-side/platform development fundamentals
• Content modeling
• REST/GraphQL API design and consumption
• Backend testing

Nice to have

• Not specified in the source material yet.

By CMS

• aem-traditional: Java, Apache Sling, OSGi (Apache Felix), JCR / Apache Oak, Maven, Sling Models.
• aem-eds: Adobe App Builder (Adobe I/O Runtime) serverless functions for backend logic and integrations.
• optimizely-cloud: Optimizely Content Cloud SDKs (Content Types in C#), Optimizely Graph, plus the Optimizely Web/Feature Experimentation SDKs and Feature Flags that back A/B testing and personalization.
• contentful: Contentful Content Management API (CMA), contentful-cli, Content Delivery API / GraphQL Content API, and a search integration (Algolia or Elasticsearch) — Contentful has no native full-text search.

Related documents

• Roadmap: roadmaps/backend.md
• Career path: career-paths/backend.md
• Evaluation criteria for this track is not defined yet.