Junior Software Engineer

Company Description: FastHub Solutions Limited is a Tanzania-based telecommunication service provider focused on simplifying mobile communication services across Africa. The company specializes in custom development and integration to address diverse telecommunication and technology needs. Its solutions are tailored to the African environment and support clients in sectors such as Education, Banking, Hospitality, SMEs, and Travel. FastHub Solutions is powered by a professional team with over 8 years of experience in building telecommunications software and clear-cut solutions. The organization offers opportunities to work on impactful projects that enable businesses to deliver reliable and innovative services.

Role Description: The Junior Software Engineer contributes to the design, development, maintenance, and enhancement of high-performance, scalable, service-oriented applications. This entry-to-mid-level role focuses on writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code while collaborating with teams and customers to deliver customer-centric products. The engineer participates in analyzing requirements, implementing features, troubleshooting issues, and staying current with technologies. Emphasis is placed on secure coding practices, understanding fundamental security principles, and contributing to secure application development in a distributed agile environment with continuous integration.

Required Technical Skill Set

• Core Java and advanced Java (J2EE)
• Spring ecosystem (Spring MVC, Spring Boot, Spring Security)
• Play Framework for Java
• RESTful APIs, Web Services (REST and SOAP)
• API design and implementation
• SQL and relational database management
• NoSQL databases (MongoDB)
• Mobile/cross-platform development (Flutter, React Native, Native Android/iOS)
• Frontend technologies (React)
• Secure coding fundamentals and basic application security practices

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Analyze, maintain, and enhance existing software applications to ensure reliability, performance, and security.
• Design and develop high-volume, high-performance, high-availability, service-oriented applications.
• Translate customer requirements into technical designs and implement robust, secure product features.
• Write clean, reusable, testable, and efficient code for customer products across backend, frontend, and mobile platforms.
• Manage day-to-day technical challenges, identify risks or issues in development activities, and communicate them effectively to the project manager.
• Prioritize tasks and manage workload across multiple projects simultaneously.
• Participate in code reviews, unit testing, and integration testing to maintain code quality.
• Remain current on emerging technologies, frameworks, vendor packages, and security best practices; evaluate and recommend improvements as needed.
• Communicate effectively with customers and cross-functional teams to establish technical alignment and gather feedback.
• Apply fundamental security principles in development, including secure coding practices, input validation, and protection against common vulnerabilities.

Fundamentals in Security (to be incorporated into daily development practices)

• Awareness of the OWASP Top 10 web application security risks and how to mitigate them (e.g., injection prevention, broken authentication, sensitive data exposure, XML external entities, broken access control, security misconfiguration, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure deserialization, using components with known vulnerabilities, insufficient logging & monitoring).
• Basic secure coding practices: proper input validation/sanitization, output encoding, secure session management, error handling without leaking sensitive information, and use of prepared statements/parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection.
• Understanding authentication and authorization mechanisms (e.g., using Spring Security for role-based access control, JWT/OAuth basics).
• Secure handling of sensitive data (encryption in transit via HTTPS, proper storage practices, avoiding hard-coded credentials).
• Knowledge of common vulnerabilities in APIs (e.g., rate limiting, proper CORS configuration, avoiding insecure direct object references).
• Basic threat awareness: recognizing potential risks during design and development, such as data exposure or unauthorized access.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.
• At least 18 months of hands-on experience in software development.
• Excellent knowledge of Core Java and the Spring framework (including Spring Boot and Spring Security).
• Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and problem-solving techniques.
• Proven experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs and Web Services (REST/SOAP).
• Hands-on experience with database tasks: SQL programming, schema design, transaction management, indexing, and backups.
• Familiarity with distributed agile methodologies and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices.
• Experience in mobile development (Android native, iOS, or Flutter/React Native).
• Ability to write reusable, testable, and efficient code.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and technical troubleshooting skills.
• Basic awareness of application security fundamentals, including OWASP Top 10 risks and secure coding principles.
• Excellent communication skills for collaborating with customers, teams, and stakeholders.