Lead Software Engineer (Java/AWS)

Role:Lead Software Engineer (Java/AWS)

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week)

Duration: 12 Months (Start Date: July 6, 2026)

Interview Process: 2 Rounds (Technical Screening + 2-Hour Technical Panel; onsite interview preferred for local candidates)

Employment Type: Contract (C2C) Important Notes

Local Candidates Only: Must currently reside in the Chicago area

Leadership Requirement: Minimum 2 years of hands-on technical lead experience

Education: Bachelor's Degree required

Required Technical Skills (10+ Years Each)

• Advanced Java and/or Kotlin development in enterprise production environments
• AWS cloud architecture and cloud-native application development
• Spring Boot for Microservices and REST API development
• Microservices architecture and distributed systems design
• RESTful API design, development, and documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger)
• SQL and relational database design, optimization, and performance tuning
• NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB, MongoDB, or Cassandra

Additional Required Experience

• CI/CD pipelines, build automation, and release management
• Event-driven architecture and asynchronous messaging platforms (Kafka preferred)
• Observability tools including logging, monitoring, metrics, tracing, and production support
• Infrastructure-as-Code, resiliency, fault tolerance, and high-availability systems
• Performance tuning, incident management, and root cause analysis

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership in the design and implementation of cloud-native applications on AWS.
• Architect scalable, secure, and highly available distributed systems using Java/Kotlin and AWS services.
• Drive architectural decisions across microservices, event-driven systems, and asynchronous processing patterns.
• Design and develop RESTful APIs and event-based integrations.
• Define service boundaries, integration patterns, resiliency strategies, and technical standards.
• Lead the development of core backend services and distributed data management solutions.
• Guide adoption of AWS-native services for compute, storage, messaging, and databases.
• Identify and resolve architectural bottlenecks, performance issues, technical debt, and production incidents.
• Establish best practices for CI/CD, observability, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
• Conduct code reviews, mentor engineers, and lead technical design discussions.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Engineering Managers, and cross-functional teams to deliver business-critical solutions.
• Participate in architecture reviews, sprint planning, backlog refinement, stand-ups, and retrospectives.

Required Soft Skills

• Strong technical communication and stakeholder management skills
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and influence architectural decisions
• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving abilities
• Strong collaboration skills across engineering and business teams
• Ability to balance technical excellence with delivery commitments in an Agile environment