Lead Java Software Engineer Remote

Lead Java Software Engineer AWS Cloud & Microservices (Remote/CST or EST Preferred)Location: Chicago office Preferred but the role can be 100% remote but there will be travel involved when needed.Duration: 12 monthsRequired Education/Experience Bachelor s degree in computer science or related fieldRequired Qualifications12+ years of Java backend development5+ years in Technical Lead, Lead Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Staff Engineer rolesSpring Boot and Microservices expertiseStrong AWS experience (especially ECS/Fargate, IAM, RDS, ALB, CloudWatch)REST API architectureDocker & Kubernetes (bonus)CI/CD using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab, etc.Elasticsearch/OpenSearchEvent-driven architecture (Kafka, SNS/SQS, RabbitMQ)Distributed systemsInfrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK)Mentoring engineersArchitecture ownershipPerformance optimizationEnterprise application modernizationRequired Technical Skills Spring Boot Java (21 latest versions ) Microservices Architecture REST API Development AWS Cloud Services (ECS/Fargate, IAM, ALB, RDS, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager) OpenSearch / Elasticsearch Docker CI/CD Pipelines GitHub Distributed Systems Cloud Architecture Observability & Monitoring DevOps Practices Infrastructure as Code (IaC) SQL & NoSQL Databases Event-Driven Architecture API Integration Performance OptimizationResponsibilities Leads software engineers in delivering business-critical applications. Establishes technical direction and architectural standards. Drives AWS cloud adoption and modernization initiatives. Ensures solution scalability, performance, security, and reliability. Promotes DevOps, CI/CD, automation, and AI-assisted development practices. Supports incident resolution, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.