Lead Java Full Stack EngineerAbout the RoleCognizant is seeking an experienced Lead Java Full Stack Engineer to design, build, and support secure, scalable, cloud-native applications for a leading financial-services client. You will lead technical delivery across Java, Spring Boot, GraphQL and REST APIs, AWS-managed services, data platforms, and event-driven systems while promoting strong engineering standards from design through production support.
In This Role, You Will• Lead end-to-end delivery of full-stack solutions using Java, Spring Boot, GraphQL, REST, and AWS-managed services.
• Drive architecture and design reviews, including service boundaries, API contracts, data models, and integration patterns.
• Develop secure, high-quality, production-grade code; conduct code reviews; and establish engineering standards.
• Build and maintain highly available, scalable services with a focus on reliability, performance, cost awareness, and maintainability.
• Implement authentication and authorization using OIDC, OAuth 2.0, JWTs, scopes, claims, and secure service-to-service patterns.
• Establish observability practices across structured logging, metrics, tracing, alerts, incident readiness, and runbooks.
• Evaluate internal and vendor solutions for architectural fit, security, scalability, and operability, and guide adoption decisions.
What You Need to Be Considered• Advanced hands-on expertise in Java and Spring Boot, including API development, dependency injection, validation, error handling, and performance tuning.
• Strong GraphQL experience with schema design, resolvers, federation or composition patterns, query optimization, caching, and API governance.
• Strong REST API experience, including contract design, pagination, filtering, idempotency, backward compatibility, and consumer-driven evolution.
• Hands-on implementation of OIDC and OAuth 2.0 using JWTs, token flows, scopes, claims, secure session patterns, and least-privilege access controls.
• Strong AWS experience designing, deploying, and operating cloud-native applications, including IAM, networking fundamentals, logs, metrics, and alarms.
• Advanced experience with Aurora PostgreSQL, including SQL, indexing, query optimization, migrations, and transactional design.
• Experience with AWS Neptune, graph modeling, Gremlin queries, and performance considerations for graph workloads.
• Experience with Amazon MSK or Kafka, including topics, partitions, consumer groups, schema evolution, delivery semantics, idempotency, retries, dead-letter queues, and monitoring.
• Strong Git, CI/CD, and automated testing practices across unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing.
• Demonstrated proficiency using Claude Code and/or GitHub Copilot responsibly for development, debugging, refactoring, test generation, and documentation.
Compensation: The annual salary for this position depends on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate. The annual salary for this position is between $65K - $125K depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.
This position is also eligible for Cognizant's discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant's applicable plans.
BenefitsCognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:
- Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
- Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
- 401(k) plan and contributions
- Long-term/Short-term Disability
- Paid Parental Leave
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
