Lead Java Backend Engineer

Location: Jersey City, NJ/New York, NY (Onsite)

About the Role: We are looking for a seasoned backend engineer to design, build, and scale distributed, event-driven systems using Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, and AWS. You will own the architecture of critical services, set engineering standards, and mentor engineers while staying hands-on in the code.

Responsibilities: Design and build scalable, secure backend services using Core Java and Spring Boot. Architect microservices, defining service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns. Develop RESTful APIs with clear contracts, versioning, security, and OpenAPI documentation. Build event-driven solutions with Apache Kafka (topic design, partitioning, consumer groups, delivery guarantees).Deploy and operate services on AWS (ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS/DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, MSK, IAM, CloudWatch).Drive resilience with circuit breakers, retries, idempotency, and graceful degradation. Troubleshoot complex production issues, including JVM tuning and heap and thread dump analysis. Lead design and code reviews, produce architecture documents, and mentor engineers. Champion CI/CD and automated testing (unit, integration, contract, performance).

Required Qualifications: 10+ years of backend software engineering experience. Expert Core Java (concurrency, collections, JVM internals, Java 8+; Java 17/21 preferred).Deep experience with Spring Boot and the Spring ecosystem (Data/JPA, Security, Cloud).Strong REST API design experience, including OAuth2 and JWT.Proven delivery of microservices in production. Hands-on Kafka experience (producers, consumers, error handling, DLQs).Strong AWS and cloud-native design experience. Solid SQL and at least one NoSQL database. Knowledge of distributed patterns (saga, outbox, CQRS).Proficiency with JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers, Docker, Git, Maven/Gradle, and CI/CD tools. Strong communication and technical leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications: Kubernetes, Terraform or Cloud Formation. Observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog).Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, schema registry. Experience with AI-assisted development tools. AWS certification. Financial services domain experience.