Role:IT Software Engineer / Lead Software Engineer
Job Location: Chicago, IL
Work Model: As specified by client
Estimated Duration: 10 months
Must-Have SkillsAPI, AWS, Azure, Elasticsearch, Java, JUnit, MySQL, Spring Boot, SQL, REST APIs, Microservices, Apigee, Event-Driven Architecture, CI/CD.
Required Education & Experience- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Strong experience designing, developing, testing, and deploying enterprise-scale software applications and digital platforms.
Required Skills & Experience- Java & Spring Boot: Extensive hands-on experience with Java 17+ / Java 21+ and Spring Boot for RESTful API and microservices development.
- API Development & Management: Strong experience designing API-first solutions, REST APIs, service contracts, payload schemas, OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, and API gateways. Experience with Apigee or similar API management platforms is required.
- Cloud: Strong experience deploying and maintaining applications in public cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, or GCP. AWS experience is strongly preferred.
- Automated Testing: Experience developing comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end automated tests using JUnit, Mockito, and similar frameworks.
- Event-Driven Architecture: Experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures using technologies such as AWS Kinesis, SQS, SNS, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Azure Event Hub.
- Databases: Strong understanding of multiple database technologies, including:
- Relational: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, AWS RDS/Aurora
- NoSQL: MongoDB, Cassandra, AWS DynamoDB
- Search: Elasticsearch
- Caching: Redis
- Vector Databases
- CI/CD: Hands-on experience building and deploying applications through CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GoCD, or similar tools.
- Security: Strong knowledge of secure service-to-service integrations using OAuth 2.0, JWT, and entitlement-based authorization models.
- Agile/Scrum: Experience working successfully in an Agile/Scrum development environment.
- Technical Leadership: Strong decision-making, critical-thinking, problem-solving, architecture, design, and technical leadership skills.
Key Responsibilities- Lead the design, development, testing, and deployment of enterprise-scale REST APIs and microservices using Java 21+, Spring Boot, Apigee API Gateway, and AWS cloud services.
- Design and implement scalable, secure, highly available, and maintainable digital platform solutions.
- Architect API-first solutions and define service contracts, payload schemas, and OpenAPI/Swagger specifications.
- Decompose complex business requirements into technical designs, user stories, development tasks, and implementation plans.
- Provide technical leadership and guidance to engineers throughout the software development lifecycle.
- Design and implement secure service-to-service integrations using OAuth 2.0, JWT, and enterprise entitlement-based authorization models.
- Serve as the technical lead for complex initiatives, driving architecture decisions, design reviews, code reviews, and technical standards.
- Collaborate with product owners, UI development teams, architects, and partner teams to deliver high-quality, customer-focused solutions.
- Establish and promote engineering best practices related to reliability, scalability, observability, security, performance, and maintainability.
- Drive quality engineering practices, including automated testing, performance testing, load testing, and production-readiness reviews.
- Lead troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and resolution of complex production issues.
- Create and maintain technical documentation, operational runbooks, architecture documentation, and engineering standards.
- Take end-to-end ownership of software solutions from design and development through deployment, monitoring, production support, and continuous improvement.
- Mentor and provide technical direction to development teams and promote best practices across engineering initiatives.
Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills- Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot or Cursor.
- Experience with additional AWS services and cloud-native application development.
- Experience with modern observability, monitoring, and performance optimization tools.
