Java Engineering Lead

About This Role

12 years of experience
Skills: Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, REST APIs, AWS / Azure, Technical Leadership, System Design, CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, Agile, Code Reviews, Mentoring, Solution Architecture, Event-Driven Architecture

About the Role

We are looking for a Java Engineering Lead with 12+ years of experience to lead and drive the design, development, and delivery of enterprise-grade Java applications and microservices. You will combine deep technical expertise with strong leadership capabilities — guiding a team of engineers, setting technical direction, and delivering high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions in a fast-paced Agile environment. This is a senior hands-on leadership role — requiring you to be equally effective writing production code as you are driving architecture decisions and mentoring engineers.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of Java engineers — providing technical direction, code reviews, architectural guidance, and career development support.
• Set and enforce engineering standards — coding guidelines, design patterns, testing practices, and security standards across the Java development team.
• Drive technical decision-making — evaluating technology choices, architecture trade-offs, and implementation approaches with authority and pragmatism.
• Lead technical design sessions — producing architecture decision records, solution designs, and technical specifications for complex Java engineering initiatives.
• Champion engineering best practices — clean code, TDD, CI/CD, shift-left testing, and DevOps culture across the team.
• Collaborate with Solution Architects and Product Owners — translating business requirements into well-architected, deliverable technical solutions.
• Contribute to recruitment and capability building — supporting technical interviews, onboarding, and skills development across the engineering team.

Hands-on Java Development

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, high-performance Java microservices using Spring Boot — applying clean architecture, SOLID principles, and well-established design patterns.
• Build and expose secure, well-documented RESTful APIs — following API-first design principles, OpenAPI standards, and performance best practices.
• Develop and optimise data access layers using Spring Data JPA / Hibernate — managing complex entity relationships, query optimisation, and database migration strategies.
• Implement event-driven architecture patterns using Kafka, AWS SQS / SNS, or Azure Service Bus — enabling asynchronous, decoupled inter-service communication.
• Write comprehensive unit and integration tests using JUnit and Mockito — maintaining high code coverage and regression confidence across all deliverables.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues — performance bottlenecks, distributed system failures, and cloud service incidents under production pressure.

Cloud & DevOps

• Design and deploy cloud-native Java applications on AWS or Azure — leveraging EKS / AKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, and API Gateway for scalable, managed application hosting.
• Implement and manage CI/CD pipelines — Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions — automating build, test, security scanning, and deployment workflows.
• Manage Docker containerisation and Kubernetes orchestration — deploying, scaling, and monitoring Java microservices workloads in production.
• Implement cloud security best practices — IAM, Secrets Manager, KMS — ensuring secure, least-privilege access across application and infrastructure layers.
• Drive observability — CloudWatch, Application Insights, Prometheus / Grafana — maintaining production health visibility and enabling rapid incident response.

Delivery & Stakeholder Engagement

• Lead Agile delivery ceremonies as a technical lead — sprint planning, backlog refinement, architecture reviews, and retrospectives.
• Manage technical risks, dependencies, and delivery impediments — proactively identifying and resolving issues that impact engineering team delivery.
• Engage senior stakeholders — technology leadership, product management, and business owners — presenting technical strategy, delivery progress, and risk assessments clearly and confidently.
• Produce clear technical documentation — architecture decision records, API contracts, engineering standards, and deployment runbooks.

What We're Looking For

• 12+ years of hands-on Java development experience with a proven track record of technical leadership in enterprise engineering teams.

• Deep Java expertise — Java 8 / 11 / 17 / 21+ — with strong OOP fundamentals, SOLID principles, design patterns, and microservices architecture.

• Strong Spring Boot proficiency — Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, Spring Kafka, and Spring Data JPA / Hibernate.

• Proven technical leadership experience — leading Java engineering teams, setting technical direction, conducting code reviews, and mentoring senior and mid-level engineers.

• Strong cloud platform experience — AWS or Azure — with hands-on expertise in EKS / AKS, Lambda, RDS, API Gateway, and cloud security services.

• Experience with event-driven architecture — Kafka, AWS SQS / SNS, or Azure Service Bus — in distributed microservices environments.

• Strong CI/CD experience — Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions — for automated build, test, and deployment pipelines.

• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes for containerised Java microservices deployment and management.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills — engaging senior technology and business stakeholders with technical authority and clarity.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills — resolving complex distributed system, performance, and production issues under pressure.

Nice to Have

• Experience with GraphQL API development alongside REST.
• Knowledge of CQRS and Event Sourcing patterns — Axon Framework or equivalent.
• Familiarity with service mesh technologies — Istio or Linkerd — for microservices traffic management and observability.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code — Terraform or AWS CloudFormation / Azure Bicep.
• Exposure to financial services domain — banking products, payments, lending, or distribution platforms.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect or Azure Solutions Architect certification.
• Experience in Financial Services, Banking, or regulated industry environments.