Lead Java Engineer for AI-Driven Microservices

EPAM Systems; Georgia; On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

EPAM Systems is seeking a Lead Java Engineer with AI tooling to join our team in the United States, with eventual relocation to Qatar. This role focuses on designing pragmatic AI architectures, integrating LLM/agents into cloud-native microservices, and delivering production-ready solutions within Java/Spring Boot ecosystems.

You will guide delivery, mentor squads, and ensure governance, observability, and secure-by-design practices, while coordinating with SRE and platform teams in a global

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on Java development with Spring/Spring Boot.
• At least 1 year of leadership experience guiding teams.
• Experience with LLMs, RAG, and agentic systems in production or pilot projects.
• Knowledge of cloud-native architecture, databases (Oracle preferred) and Kafka/GitLab.
• Experience with prompt engineering, agents, and guardrails in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to AI architectures (RAG/agents) within cloud-native microservices.
• Implement and apply SDD specs/templates; support governance and quality gates.
• Build and maintain agentic use cases and guardrails across squads.
• Deliver production AI integrations (LLMs, embeddings) in Java/Spring Boot services.
• Implement observability, rollout/versioning, and CI/CD for prompts and models on AKS/Azure.
• Track adoption, productivity, quality, and risk KPIs for AI-enabled delivery.
• Participate in playbooks, training, and documentation; mentor teammates across teams.
• Ensure responsible AI controls and data handling align with policies.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

English proficiency

Tools

Java

Spring Boot

Kafka

Oracle/PLSQL

GitLab

Azure (AKS)

Job description

EPAM Systems is seeking a Lead Java Engineer with AI tooling to join our team in the United States, with eventual relocation to Qatar. This role focuses on designing pragmatic AI architectures, integrating LLM/agents into cloud-native microservices, and delivering production-ready solutions within Java/Spring Boot ecosystems.

You will guide delivery, mentor squads, and ensure governance, observability, and secure-by-design practices, while coordinating with SRE and platform teams in a global