• Design, develop, and maintain robust, scalable, and high-performance object oriented code in our backend services. • Develop public REST APIs using Java and internal gRPC APIs for inter-service and inter-system communication. • Craft systems designs, lead design decisions, and drive alignment with other senior engineers. • Write automated unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, concurrency tests, load/performance tests. • Analyze existing systems to identify bottlenecks, tech debt, and implement scalability, and stability improvements. • Implement automation for testing, monitoring, healing, and scaling applications, continuous integration and deployment to reduce time to market. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, and other engineers, to define and implement new features. • Conduct code reviews (comment, approve, seek revisions, merge), mentor junior and mid-level engineers, and actively promote engineering best practices. • Dive deep and troubleshoot complex issues, devise fixes, author root cause analysis documents, and ensure lasting performance and reliability. • Conduct objective and comparative analyses of competing technologies to advise the team of pros and cons of a technology solution. • Maintain robust documentation (design docs, run books, change management docs, and readiness plans). • Provide live-site support for production applications by monitoring systems, ensuring rapid incident resolution, and driving continuous improvement. • Drive cross-team projects as a single-threaded-owner (STO) or tech lead, and actively unblock other engineers to make progress.

Role Description We are seeking a Full Stack / Backend Developer with strong experience in PHP and large-scale MySQL environments to join our engineering team. This role focuses on building and maintaining backend services and APIs that power our platform, with some involvement in front-end integrations using modern JavaScript frameworks. You will work on systems that handle high volumes of data and traffic, requiring careful attention to performance, scalability, and reliability. Key Responsibilities - Design, develop, and maintain backend services using PHP - Build and maintain APIs and integrations with internal and third-party systems - Design and optimize queries for large-scale MySQL databases - Analyze and improve database performance, indexing, and query efficiency - Collaborate with front-end developers working in React - Troubleshoot production issues and implement long-term solutions - Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code - Participate in code reviews and contribute to development best practices - Support deployment processes and ongoing system maintenance Qualifications - 3+ years of professional experience with PHP (no frameworks required) - Strong experience working with large-scale MySQL databases - Deep understanding of query optimization, indexing strategies, and performance tuning - Experience handling high-volume data and production-critical systems - Strong understanding of backend architecture and API design - Experience building and consuming RESTful APIs - Familiarity with front-end integration using React - Experience with version control systems (Git) - Strong problem-solving and debugging skills - Ability to communicate effectively and work collaboratively Preferred Qualifications - Experience working with large, legacy PHP codebases - Familiarity with replication, sharding, or other scaling strategies in MySQL - Experience with asynchronous processing, queues, or background jobs - Familiarity with AI coding tools such as Copilot in VS code or Claude Code - Understanding of web security best practices - Experience working in high-traffic environments - Exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS or similar) Benefits - Competitive wages - Extensive benefit program that can be personalized to your needs - Medical, dental, and vision coverage - Short and long-term disability insurance - Company provided life insurance and supplemental life insurance - 401K retirement plan with company match - Generous paid time off, including paid parental leave for new parents Company Description Lee Enterprises is a leading provider of local news and information and a major subscription and advertising platform, with daily and weekly newspapers and rapidly expanding digital products serving 114 markets across 25 states. Our core commitment is to provide valuable, intensely local news and information to the communities we serve. Lee Enterprises is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We respect and celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. For more information about Lee, check us out at www.lee.net .

• Design and develop fullstack applications using Java for backend services and React for frontend interfaces • Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code following industry best practices and coding standards • Develop and maintain RESTful APIs and integrate third-party services seamlessly • Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other developers to translate requirements into technical solutions • Participate in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to team members and implementing improvements • Troubleshoot, debug, and optimize application performance across the entire stack • Contribute to technical documentation and knowledge sharing within the team • Engage actively in agile ceremonies including stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives • Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends relevant to fullstack development

• Design and develop scalable AI-powered backend systems for SysML-based engineering environments • Build and maintain distributed data ingestion and ETL pipelines for large-scale engineering artifacts and technical documentation • Develop and optimize LLM-powered workflows for metadata extraction, semantic analysis, and entity resolution • Implement AI agents and multi-agent orchestration workflows • Design and improve RAG-based architectures and semantic retrieval pipelines • Develop graph-based knowledge representation and traceability analysis solutions • Work with graph databases, graph processing libraries, and semantic relationship modeling • Build and optimize distributed data processing workflows using Apache Spark • Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams to integrate AI capabilities into platform services • Design scalable and high-performance APIs and backend services • Improve system reliability, scalability, observability, and performance across distributed environments • Participate in architecture discussions and technical decision-making processes • Contribute to cloud-native infrastructure and deployment workflows • Support deployments in secure, air-gapped, or classified environments when required • Create and maintain technical documentation and engineering best practices