PRINCIPAL JAVA ENGINEER

PRINCIPAL JAVA ENGINEER
Brokerage, NJ

REQUIREMENT_CITY -NJ-Hybrid

Role Name - PRINCIPAL JAVA ENGINEER

ROLE_DESCRIPTION -

We are seeking a Principal Java Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for the design, development, and modernization of large-scale enterprise applications. The role requires deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, microservices and cloud-native engineering, along with the ability to define technical direction, solve complex engineering challenges, and mentor development teams.

Key Responsibilities

Provide technical leadership for enterprise applications built using Java, Spring Boot and microservices architecture.
Design scalable, resilient, secure, and high-performing distributed systems.
Remain hands-on with architecture, design and critical code development, including code reviews and complex troubleshooting.
Define engineering patterns, reusable frameworks, coding standards, and development best practices.
Drive application modernization, including decomposition of legacy/monolithic applications into modern services.
Design and integrate REST APIs, event-driven services and asynchronous processing using technologies such as Kafka.
Lead technical decisions around APIs, data models, caching, resiliency, observability, and integration patterns.
Work with Docker, Kubernetes and cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS to develop and deploy cloud-native applications.
Drive engineering excellence across CI/CD, automated testing, security, performance and observability.
Troubleshoot complex production and performance issues across application, database, integration, and infrastructure layers.
Partner with architects, product owners, business teams and engineering leads to translate business requirements into effective technical solutions.
Mentor senior engineers and developers and provide technical guidance across multiple development squads.
Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend pragmatic adoption based on business and engineering value.
Required Skills

12+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building enterprise Java applications.
Expert-level knowledge of Java/JDK, Spring Framework, Spring Boot and Spring ecosystem.
Strong experience with microservices and distributed systems architecture.
Deep understanding of REST APIs, API design, integration patterns and event-driven architecture.
Experience with Kafka or equivalent enterprise messaging/event-streaming platforms.
Strong knowledge of relational databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL or SQL Server; exposure to NoSQL platforms is desirable.
Strong experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
Experience developing applications on Azure, AWS or another major cloud platform.
Strong understanding of CI/CD and DevSecOps, using platforms such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Maven or Gradle.
Experience with automated testing frameworks including JUnit, Mockito and integration testing.
Strong understanding of application security, authentication/authorization, resiliency, logging, monitoring and observability.
Proven ability to perform code reviews, performance tuning, root-cause analysis and production troubleshooting.
Strong technical leadership, communication and stakeholder-management skills.
Preferred Skills

Experience with AKS/EKS, Terraform and infrastructure-as-code.
Experience with Redis, MongoDB or other NoSQL technologies.
Knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OIDC and enterprise IAM/security patterns.
Experience with tools such as SonarQube, Dynatrace, Splunk, AppDynamics or OpenTelemetry.
Experience modernizing complex legacy applications in banking, insurance or financial services.
Exposure to Generative AI / AI-assisted software engineering and tools such as GitHub Copilot

Skills: Advanced Java Concepts
Experience Required: 8-10