Java Backend Lead Software Engineer Kafka AWS

JP Morgan Chase; Wilmington (DE); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

JPMorgan Chase in Wilmington, DE is seeking a Backend Lead Software Engineer focused on Kafka and AWS to drive secure, scalable backend services. You will design, develop, and optimize microservices while guiding best practices across the team in a fast-paced, enterprise environment.

The role emphasizes architecture decisions, streaming data pipelines, and adherence to secure coding with AI-assisted tooling to boost quality and velocity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience and formal training.
• Backend + microservices with Java/Spring Boot or Node.js.
• Cloud experience (AWS/Azure/GCP) and REST/WebSocket APIs.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools and secure coding.
• Leadership in architecture decisions and delivery.
• Experience streaming with Kafka and event-driven patterns.

Responsibilities

• Executes creative software solutions, design, development, and technical troubleshooting with ability to think beyond routine or conventional approaches to build solutions or break down technical problems.
• Develops secure high-quality production code, and reviews and debugs code written by others.
• Drives team adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to improve code quality, delivery speed, and operational outcomes.
• Applies knowledge of SDLC tools to improve automation and value.
• Identifies opportunities to automate remediation of recurring issues for stability.
• Leads evaluation sessions with external vendors and internal teams on architectural designs.
• Leads communities of practice across Software Engineering to promote new technologies.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Node.js

AWS

REST APIs

WebSockets

JSON

SQL

NoSQL

AI-assisted development tools

Security best practices

Leadership

Architecture decisions

Distributed systems

Kafka

Apache Spark

Apache Flink

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

AWS Certification

Tools

Kafka

Apache Spark

Apache Flink

Job description

Job Description

We have an opportunity to impact your career and provide an adventure where you can push the limits of what's possible.

As a ava Backend Lead Software Engineer Kafka AWS at JPMorgan Chase within the Consumer and Community Banking, youare an integral part of an agile team that works to enhance, build, and deliver trusted market-leading technology products in a secure, stable, and scalable way. As a core technical contributor, you are responsible for conducting critical technology solutions across multiple technical areas within various business functions in support of the firm’s business objectives.

Job responsibilities

• Executes creative software solutions, design, development, and technical troubleshooting with ability to think beyond routine or conventional approaches to build solutions or break down technical problems
• Develops secure high-quality production code, and reviews and debugs code written by others
• Drives team adoption of enterprise-authorized AI-assisted engineering practices within the work environment to improve code quality, delivery speed, and operational outcomes (e.g., AI-assisted code review/refactoring, test strategy acceleration, incident/root-cause analysis support), while establishing consistent validation standards (secure coding, peer review, automated testing) and promoting reuse of effective patterns across the team.
• Applies knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise-authorized AI-assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realized by automation.
• Identifies opportunities to eliminate or automate remediation of recurring issues to improve overall operational stability of software applications and systems
• Leads evaluation sessions with external vendors, startups, and internal teams to drive outcomes-oriented probing of architectural designs, technical credentials, and applicability for use within existing systems and information architecture
• Leads communities of practice across Software Engineering to drive awareness and use of new and leading-edge technologies

Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Formal training or certification on software engineering concepts and 5+ years applied experience
• Hands-on practical experience delivering system design, application development, testing, and operational stability
• Proficiency in back-end technologies (e.g., Java, Springboot, Node.js ) with experience building microservices-based applications; for full-stack roles, proficiency also includes front-end technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Typescript, React, Angular)
• Demonstrated ability to independently solve design and functionality challenges with minimal supervision
• Experience working with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), distributed systems, and web technologies, including RESTful APIs and web services, WebSockets, and JSON
• Hands-on experience designing and building scalable applications using SQL and NoSQL databases
• Demonstrated experience leading effective use of approved AI-assisted software development tools (e.g., for coding, code review, test acceleration, troubleshooting) with the ability to set team expectations for validating AI outputs for correctness, performance, and security
• Strong understanding of responsible AI use in engineering workflows, including data sensitivity considerations, secure handling of inputs/outputs, and adherence to resiliency and security expectations; experience coaching engineers on safe, compliant adoption within delivery practices
• Led design and delivery ofKafka-based event streamingplatforms/services inhigh-throughput (high TPS)environments; deep experience withevent-driven architecturepatterns and distributed systems reliability
• Proven ability tolead technical direction: drive architecture decisions, write/own design docs, align stakeholders, and deliver through ambiguity
• Experience improvingoperability(SLOs/SLAs, on-call readiness, monitoring, incident response, postmortems) for streaming systems

Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Strong soft skills, including presentation, negotiation, mentoring, and stakeholder management
• Strong problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills
• Ability to drive broader impact by sharing and contributing best practices
• AWS certification
• Experience building and operatinghigh-volume data processing pipelinesusingApache Spark (Spark SQL, Structured Streaming)and/orApache Flink(DataStream/Table API) in production.