Lead Java Full Stack Engineer

Cognizant; Plano (TX); On-site; USD 65,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays + PTO

401(k) plan and contributions

Long-term/Short-term Disability

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is hiring a Lead Java Full Stack Engineer to design, build, and support secure, scalable cloud-native apps for a financial-services client. You will lead technical delivery across Java, Spring Boot, GraphQL, REST APIs, and AWS services, driving architecture reviews and implementing secure patterns.

The role emphasizes production-grade code, observability, and governance, with strong focus on reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Advanced hands-on expertise in Java and Spring Boot, including API development and performance tuning.
• Strong GraphQL experience with schema design, resolvers, and API governance.
• Strong REST API experience, including contract design and backward compatibility.
• OIDC/OAuth 2.0 with JWTs and least-privilege access controls.
• AWS cloud-native design, IAM, networking, logs, metrics, and alarms.
• Aurora PostgreSQL with SQL optimization and migrations.
• Kafka/MSK familiarity, topics, partitions, and retries.
• Git, CI/CD, and automated testing across unit to end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of full-stack solutions using Java, Spring Boot, GraphQL, REST, and AWS services.
• Drive architecture reviews, including service boundaries, API contracts, and data models.
• Develop secure, production-grade code and establish engineering standards.
• Build scalable services with focus on reliability, performance, and cost awareness.
• Implement authentication/authorization using OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and JWTs.
• Establish observability with logging, metrics, tracing, and runbooks.
• Evaluate internal/vendor solutions for fit, security, and operability.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

GraphQL

REST API design

AWS

PostgreSQL

Kafka

Git

CI/CD

Testing

Code assistants

Tools

AWS

Aurora PostgreSQL

Neptune

Kafka

Git

Job description

Lead Java Full Stack Engineer

About the Role

Cognizant 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.

Why Choose Cognizant?

At Cognizant, we help leading organizations modernize technology, create digital products, and deliver meaningful customer experiences. You will join a collaborative engineering environment that values innovation, quality, continuous learning, and the responsible use of modern development tools.

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.

Benefits

• 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

Disclaimer

The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.

Important Disclaimers

Please note: A few of our roles may require in-person interviews at Cognizant offices or client locations, depending on project or client needs.

Candidate must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or at any time in the future.

Application Deadline

Applications for this position will be accepted until 10/6/2026. Candidates are encouraged to apply as early as possible, as the posting may close sooner if a sufficient pool of qualified applicants is identified.