Java developer screening questions for recruiters

The quickest way to screen a Java developer is to test the specific claims on the resume: the framework, the architecture, the build tools and how their code reached production. That takes about 20 minutes. For the full method (timing, questions by level, judging answers), read our guide on how to screen a Java developer; this page is a second question set, organized by the keywords you see on Java resumes.

What does a Java developer do?

A Java developer builds and maintains software in Java, most often back-end services and APIs, usually with the Spring Boot framework. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts them under software developers, who "design computer applications or programs."

Which skills should you check at each level?

What screening questions should you ask a Java developer?

Each question matches a resume keyword; use the ones on your job description. We wrote them for this page.

Spring Boot: your service needs a different database password in test and in production. How do you set that up?

This checks hands-on Spring Boot setup and care with secrets.

Strong answer: Spring profiles or environment variables for each environment, with real secrets pulled from a secrets manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault) and never committed to Git.

Weak answer: "I change it in the properties file before deploying."

Microservices: service A calls service B, and B is down. What does the user see, and what did you build to handle it?

If they've run microservices in production, they've dealt with this.

Strong answer: timeouts on the call, limited retries, a circuit breaker (often Resilience4j) and a fallback response, plus an alert so someone knows.

Weak answer: "Microservices are independent, so it doesn't affect anything."

Maven or Gradle: a build that worked yesterday fails today with a dependency conflict. What do you do?

Build problems are daily work, and the answer shows whether they diagnose or guess.

Strong answer: print the dependency tree, find the two versions of the same library, then exclude one or pin the version (sometimes with a BOM), and lock versions so it doesn't recur.

Weak answer: "Clear the local cache and rebuild," as the whole answer.

Java upgrades: have you moved a codebase from Java 8 or 11 to 17 or 21? What broke?

Spring Boot 3 has a Java 17 baseline and is built on Jakarta EE, which replaced the javax.* package names with jakarta.*, so imports change across the codebase.

Strong answer: names concrete problems, such as javax imports changing to jakarta, libraries that needed new versions, and modules removed from the JDK, plus how they tested the result.

Weak answer: "We just changed the version number."

Security: how did users log in to your last Java app, and how did the service know who was calling?

Spring Security is on many Java resumes, and describing the login flow shows whether they configured it.

Strong answer: describes the flow: an identity provider (Okta, Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID) issuing tokens, Spring Security checking them on each request, and roles controlling access.

Weak answer: "We used Spring Security," with no description of how it worked.

Deployment: how did your code get from your laptop to production?

This tests the Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD lines on the resume.

Strong answer: a CI pipeline (Jenkins, GitHub Actions or GitLab) that builds and tests the code, packages a Docker image, deploys to Kubernetes or a cloud service, and a way to roll back.

Weak answer: "The DevOps team handled that." Fine for some roles; ask what they saw of it.

What red flags should you note?

• "Microservices" on the resume, but the system they describe is one large application deployed as a single file.
• Kafka listed as a skill, but they can't say whether they wrote code that sent messages, read them, or neither.
• Every question gets answered with the same project, including ones it doesn't fit.
• The job needs Java 17 or later and they've never worked past Java 8. Note it for the hiring manager.

For signs that someone else is doing the talking, read how to spot a proxy interview.

How do you run this screen with Simplehire?

Create the role with the job description's keywords as its required skills (for example Java 21, Spring Boot, Kafka and Maven) and send the candidate the interview link. For quick first screens, Basic ($2 per screen, about 15 minutes) is enough. For candidates you plan to submit, Adaptive ($3, about 20 minutes) adds follow-up questions that dig into the candidate's answers and a per-answer AI assessment. Advanced ($5, about 30 minutes) suits senior roles and adds an optional coding round, scored separately.

Alongside the verdict and Skills demonstrated X/Y, the report has a Screen summary, Key insights and Areas to probe, and you make the decision. Proctoring runs on every screen. The free allowance is 25 Basic screens a month; see pricing. Related pages: full-stack developer questions and DevOps engineer questions.