Lead Software Developer

Systems Engineering Services is seeking a Lead Software Engineer with Email Development Experience based in the Denver, CO area to work in Office.

We are seeking a Lead Developer / Email Platform SME to lead the design and development of a new enterprise-scale email and messaging platform built primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This individual will serve as the technical lead for the solution and must bring deep, hands-on expertise with Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), enterprise email delivery, sender reputation management, DNS/email authentication, and high-volume transactional communications.

This is not simply an application development position. The successful candidate must understand the complete email delivery lifecycle—from application-generated communication requests through domain authentication, routing, delivery, bounce/complaint handling, reputation monitoring, and operational support.

The platform will use AWS SES with supporting application services developed primarily in Java and Spring Boot.

The Lead Developer will be expected to take ownership of the solution, provide technical direction to other developers, work directly with architects and business stakeholders, and remain hands-on throughout design and implementation.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design and development of an enterprise email and messaging platform using AWS SES and related AWS services.

• Serve as the project's Email Subject Matter Expert, establishing enterprise email architecture, standards, and best practices.

• Design and implement highly scalable services for generating, processing, routing, and delivering transactional and enrollment-related email communications.

• Lead the implementation and configuration of Amazon SES, including:

  • Verified domains and sending identities

  • Configuration sets

  • Dedicated IP strategy where applicable

  • Sending pools and traffic segmentation

  • Bounce and complaint processing

  • Suppression management

  • Delivery event tracking

  • Reputation monitoring

  • Sending quotas and production readiness

• Own the email domain authentication strategy, including:

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC

  • DNS configuration and validation

  • Return-Path / MAIL FROM configuration

  • Domain alignment

  • Sender authentication and deliverability

• Establish and maintain strong email sender reputation and deliverability across major mailbox providers.

• Design mechanisms for identifying and responding to hard bounces, soft bounces, complaints, suppression events, and delivery failures.

• Develop Java/Spring Boot services and APIs supporting email generation, communication requests, processing, routing, and delivery.

• Design and implement integration between application components and AWS messaging services.

• Support both individual and batch communication processing for high-volume enterprise workloads.

• Develop reusable communication services supporting templates, variables, merge fields, business rules, branding, and document/email routing.

• Participate in the design of template management and communication-builder capabilities.

• Implement services capable of accepting structured communication requests, including XML/JSON and application-generated requests.

• Design asynchronous, resilient processing patterns for large-volume email workloads.

• Implement event-driven processing for email delivery events and status updates.

• Integrate email delivery events into application databases, dashboards, reporting, reconciliation, and operational monitoring.

• Design for reliability, fault tolerance, scalability, security, monitoring, and operational supportability.

• Establish logging, tracing, alerting, and production support standards for the platform.

• Review designs and code produced by other developers and provide hands-on technical leadership.

• Troubleshoot complex application, AWS, DNS, messaging, and email-deliverability issues.

• Work closely with architects, infrastructure teams, security teams, product owners, and business stakeholders.

• Take ownership of technical decisions and drive work through implementation and production deployment.

Required Technical Experience

Email / Messaging Expertise

• Extensive hands-on experience designing or supporting enterprise email platforms.

• Expert-level knowledge of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).

• Strong understanding of enterprise transactional email and high-volume email-delivery architectures.

• Demonstrated experience managing and protecting sender and domain reputation.

• Expert knowledge of email authentication and DNS technologies including:

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC

  • DNS

  • MX records

  • CNAME records

  • TXT records

  • Custom MAIL FROM / Return-Path

  • Domain alignment

• Strong understanding of:

  • Hard and soft bounces

  • Complaint handling

  • Suppression lists

  • Feedback loops

  • Spam filtering

  • Throttling

  • Deliverability monitoring

  • Reputation management

  • IP/domain warm-up strategies

• Experience troubleshooting deliverability issues involving major mailbox providers and enterprise email gateways.