Senior Backend Java and AWS Engineer

Job Description Job Title: Senior Backend Java and AWS Engineer Location: Chicago, IL 60603 (Onsite) Duration: 13 months contract Must Have Skills/Attributes : •AWS •Java •Spring Boot •SQL Experience Desired : •Advanced Java and/or Kotlin in production environments (10 yrs) •Strong AWS expertise (10 yrs) •Spring Boot building microservices and REST APIs (10 yrs) •Microservices architecture and distributed systems patterns (10 yrs) •RESTful API design and implementation with documentation (10 yrs) •SQL and relational databases (10 yrs) •NoSQL non-relational data stores (10 yrs) Required Minimum Education: Bachelor's Degree Job Description: Required Skills: •Strong AWS expertise - designing and operating cloud-native, highly available distributed systems. •Advanced Java and/or Kotlin in production environments. •Spring Boot - building microservices and REST APIs (Spring Web/MVC, dependency injection, configuration, actuator/health checks). •Microservices architecture and distributed systems patterns (service boundaries, resiliency, fault tolerance). •RESTful API design and implementation with documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger). •SQL and relational databases - data modeling, query tuning, performance optimization. •NoSQL / non-relational data stores (e.g., DynamoDB, MongoDB, Cassandra). •CI/CD pipelines and build/deploy automation (quality gates, repeatable releases). •Data streaming / asynchronous messaging - event-driven patterns (e.g., Kafka). •Observability - logging, metrics, tracing, and production troubleshooting / incident investigation. Soft Skills (Must-Have): •Strong technical communication skills - able to clearly explain complex designs and trade-offs to engineers, product owners, and managers. •Collaborative mindset - ability to work effectively across teams on shared architectures and dependencies. •Technical leadership and ownership - driving decisions and follow-through on complex engineering problems. •Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking - especially in debugging, production support, and performance issues. •Ability to balance technical depth with delivery - making pragmatic decisions aligned with business priorities. •Comfortable participating in Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives) while remaining primarily hands-on. Job Requirements: •Provide deep technical leadership for the design and implementation of Java-based, cloud-native systems on AWS. •Define service architecture, data flows, and integration patterns to meet strict scalability, availability, and security requirements. •Drive architectural decisions across microservices, event-driven, and asynchronous processing patterns. •Ensure clear service ownership and well-defined contracts between services. •Define standards for infrastructure-as-code, resiliency, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation. •Proactively identify architectural bottlenecks, scalability constraints, and technical debt. •Lead development of core backend services using modern Java frameworks and AWS-native patterns. •Design and implement RESTful and event-based APIs. •Build message-driven processing and distributed data management solutions. •Guide adoption of AWS services including managed compute, messaging, storage, and databases. •Investigate and resolve defects, performance issues, and production incidents. •Implement fixes and improvements to ensure system stability and reliability. •Support reliable operation of distributed systems in production through observability, logging, metrics, and tracing. •Review pull requests and lead technical design discussions. •Define architecture and implementation standards for the team. •Establish technical best practices for CI/CD automation, observability, and production troubleshooting. •Work closely with the engineering team to guide design and implementation of Java-based services on AWS. •Collaborate with other engineering teams to align on APIs, integrations, and shared cloud architecture. •Partner with Product Owners and engineering managers to translate requirements into technical solutions. •Align execution with delivery priorities. •Participate in architecture reviews and integration discussions. •Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, stand-ups, and retrospectives. •Attend necessary technical and operational calls. Skill Set Java Backend, Spring Boot, AWS, SQL