Lead Java Software Engineer

Jobtailor; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in Chicago, IL seeks a senior Java backend engineer to design and scale enterprise applications. You will lead development, mentor juniors, and shape technical decisions across microservices, REST APIs, and cloud deployments.

Qualifications include 8+ years of enterprise Java experience, Spring Boot, AWS services, and CI/CD practices. You will collaborate with cross‑functional teams to deliver reliable, scalable backend solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and 8+ years of enterprise Java experience.
• Strong Java 17+ and backend development expertise.
• Experience with Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and microservices.
• Ability to design scalable, fault‑tolerant backend systems using AWS.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and provide technical direction for complex Java projects.
• Mentor junior developers and drive best practices across the team.
• Design, implement, and test RESTful services and data pipelines.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to deliver business‑valued features.
• Ensure deployment pipelines and DevOps practices with CI/CD.

Skills

Java Backend

Spring Boot

Microservices

REST APIs

AWS

CI/CD

Databases

Team Leadership

Mentoring

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field

Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

OpenAPI

Postman

Swagger

Jenkins

Kubernetes

CloudWatch

Job description

Responsibilities

• Competent to perform all programming and development assignments without close supervision; normally assigned the more complex aspects of systems work.
• Acts as team leader for development and support groups; provides programming and application/technical leadership, guidance, and assistance to other team members.
• Works directly on complex application/technical problem identification and resolution, including responding to off‑shift and weekend support calls.
• Works independently on complex systems or infrastructure components that may be used by one or more applications or systems.
• Drives application development focused on delivering business‑valuable features.
• Maintains high standards of software quality within the team by establishing good practices and habits.
• Identifies and encourages areas for growth and improvement within the team.
• Mentors junior developers.
• Communicates with end users and internal customers to help direct development, debugging, and testing of application software for accuracy, integrity, interoperability, and completeness.
• Leads the development of new functionality and applications on cross‑functional teams.
• Performs integration testing and customer acceptance testing of components that require careful planning and execution to ensure timely, quality results.
• Participates in technology evaluation and recommendations.
• Applies an enterprise‑wide view to solutions to support the adoption of standards and practices and promote reuse.
• Employee is also responsible for performing other job duties as assigned by management from time to time.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of experience designing and developing enterprise Java applications (5+ years with a Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field)
• Strong expertise in Java 17+ and backend development
• Experience developing scalable software applications using relational and NoSQL databases
• Hands‑on experience with Spring Boot and the Spring ecosystem
• Solid understanding of software architecture patterns, including MVC, Microservices, and Event‑driven Architecture
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs
• Experience with API design and testing tools such as OpenAPI (Swagger), Postman, and Assertible
• Strong knowledge of AWS services, including IAM, API Gateway, Aurora, RDS, DynamoDB, Kinesis, S3, CloudWatch, Lambda, ALB, NLB, Fargate, SQS, SNS, and KMS
• Experience with messaging and event streaming technologies such as Amazon Kinesis, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, and Apache ActiveMQ
• Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices using Jenkins or similar tools
• Experience delivering highly available, scalable, resilient, and fault‑tolerant backend solutions
• Understanding of software architecture principles and experience contributing to technical design decisions
• Ability to work effectively under pressure and meet project deadlines
• Passion for technology and eagerness to contribute to a collaborative, team‑oriented environment