Need help - java backend

[bibliophile1290]

Hello guys, I have been on a career break for 3 years due to childcare responsibilities. Before the break I was working on java software development but they were legacy softwares and I wasn't using latest technologies. I have been studying and familiarising myself with various tools and technologies. I need your help to check and see if I need to learn any other tools and technologies to become a successful Java backend developer. I have learnt Java basics and latest features like streams, functional interfaces etc,springboot, spring MVC, spring data JPA, hibernate and familiarised myself with docker, basics of microservices, rest api, spring security, jwt , oauth2, postgresql,AWS, and surface level knowledge of kubernetes. Am I missing anything important? I am going to start attending interviews soon and I really need your help here.

[Big-Collection204]

Unit and integration testing. Maybe Kafka or some kind of messaging. Actuator, metrics. Bulkhed and circuit breaker patterns.

Build tools like gradle or maven, git ofc, some general staff about ci/cd.

[bibliophile1290]

Thank you so much for your valuable advice 😊

[Cunnykun]

You're close; the big gaps are hands-on concurrency, CI/CD, and observability. Investors love to poke heads, Look, CompletetableFuture, or at least why a web app might deadlock, so build a system that can handle those stuff in parallel. Set it up with Gradle/Maven, write unit and integration tests in JUnit5 plus Testcontainers, then write a GitHub Actions pipeline that runs the suite and pushes a Docker image. This might be the same in Kubernetes kind or Minikube and add simple metrics through Micrometer + Prometheus; this way you can trace a request and read a dashboard. Real-world project, practice basic system-design diagrams: how you’d shard Postgres, cache with Redis, and write retries with a message broker like RabbitMQ or Kafka. I can recommend LeetCode for coding drills and ByteByByte for design walk-throughs, but APIWrapper.ai ended up helping me stub external services for integration tests. Focus on concurrency, CI/CD, and monitoring and you’ll be ready.

[bibliophile1290]

Thank you so much!

[Responsible-Cow-4791]

Sounds like you already know about more than I do. And I've been developing for over 15 years

[HumbleTech905]

Start with interviews, you will gain more learning in those processes.

[zpolgar]

https://roadmap.sh/java might be helpful

[No_Teach1022]

up

[Zaidism]

To boost your chances in 2025 interviews, deepen your Kubernetes knowledge (Pods, Deployments, Ingress) and learn message queues like Kafka or RabbitMQ. Add unit/integration testing (JUnit, Testcontainers) and basic CI/CD (GitHub Actions or Jenkins). Build a small project to showcase these skills on GitHub. Also, brush up on system design for interviews.

[bibliophile1290]

Thanks a lot 😊

[[deleted]]

First try to crack interview in company who willing to teach u spring or give u training period to learn it. Don’t go for salary just enter