Role: Senior Lead Java Backend Engineer
Loc: Chicago, IL Education
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Experience
- 10+ years of hands-on experience designing, developing, and delivering enterprise-grade Java applications.
- 3+ years of experience leading and mentoring geographically distributed development teams.
- Proven experience delivering complex, highly scalable, and mission-critical backend systems.
Required Technical Skills
- Strong expertise in Java 17 and modern Java development practices.
- Extensive backend development experience with a focus on scalable, resilient, and high-performance applications.
- Strong knowledge of RESTful API design, development, and integration.
- Hands-on experience with AWS services, including IAM, Kinesis, DynamoDB, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, and KMS.
- Proficiency with PostgreSQL or other relational database management systems.
- Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, automation, and cloud-native deployments.
- Knowledge of high-availability architectures, fault-tolerant systems, and reliability engineering principles.
- Experience contributing to solution architecture and technical design decisions.
Preferred Skills
- Experience developing applications and automation solutions using Python.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design, development, and delivery of complex software solutions with minimal supervision.
- Serve as a technical leader for development and support teams, providing guidance, mentoring, and best practices.
- Drive the development of business-critical features and ensure alignment with organizational goals.
- Design and implement scalable, secure, highly available, and reliable backend services and platforms.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex application and infrastructure issues, including participation in off-hours production support as needed.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver new functionality and enterprise-wide technology solutions.
- Establish and promote software engineering standards, coding best practices, and quality assurance processes.
- Mentor junior engineers and foster a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.
- Partner with business stakeholders, end users, and internal customers to define requirements and ensure successful solution delivery.
- Lead integration testing, customer acceptance testing, and deployment activities to ensure high-quality releases.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and provide recommendations for platform and architectural improvements.
- Promote reusable, standardized solutions that align with enterprise architecture and long-term technology strategies.
- Coordinate production support activities, including incident triage, root cause analysis, stakeholder communication, and resolution management.
Required Soft Skills
- Strong leadership, mentoring, and team collaboration skills.
- Ability to perform effectively in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple priorities under tight deadlines.
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and decision-making abilities.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to interact effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Passion for technology, continuous improvement, and delivering high-quality software solutions.
- Experience managing production incidents, driving resolution efforts, and communicating effectively with stakeholders.
