Lead Java Backend Engineer – Transaction Applications

Location: Delaware
Job Type: Contract
Experience: 8+ Years

Job Summary

We are seeking a hands-on Lead Java Backend Engineer to join a team supporting critical transaction applications, backend platforms, and middleware services. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, and Cassandra, along with experience designing scalable distributed systems and working with AWS cloud services.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. The candidate must be comfortable writing production-quality code, participating in architecture discussions, conducting code reviews, and mentoring other engineers. A coding interview will be required.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and enhancement of transaction processing applications and backend/middleware services.
• Develop scalable and high-performance applications using Java and Spring Boot.
• Design and implement event-driven solutions using Apache Kafka.
• Work with Cassandra for distributed and high-volume data storage.
• Participate in architecture and technical design discussions.
• Conduct code reviews and establish coding and engineering best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production and application issues and drive root-cause resolution.
• Collaborate with architects, product teams, developers, and other technology stakeholders.
• Guide and mentor engineering team members while remaining actively involved in development.
• Build and deploy cloud-based applications using AWS services.
• Work with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and configuration.
• Develop and manage applications using AWS ECS and Lambda.
• Ensure solutions meet requirements for scalability, reliability, security, and performance.

Required Skills

• 8+ years of hands-on software development experience.
• Strong programming experience with Java.
• Strong experience with Spring Boot and microservices.
• Expert-level Kafka experience is required.
• Strong experience with Cassandra or other distributed NoSQL databases.
• Experience developing backend and middleware services.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and event-driven architecture.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, particularly:
  • ECS
  • Lambda
  • Terraform
• Experience leading architecture discussions and coding/design reviews.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Must be comfortable with hands-on coding and technical interviews.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working on financial services, banking, payments, or transaction-processing applications.
• Experience with high-volume, low-latency transaction systems.
• Experience with CI/CD and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.

Role Expectations

This is not a pure people-management or architecture-only position. The successful candidate will be expected to remain hands-on with coding and technical implementation while providing technical leadership to the team.