Job Title: Senior Backend Engineer – Java / AWS
Location: Washington, DC (On-site)
Employment Type: W2 Contract
About the Opportunity:
ZipStaff is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for our client, a national passenger transportation organization, to build and support the cloud-native integrations and transaction-processing services behind critical operational systems. You will take hands-on ownership of resilient, multi-region AWS architectures, event-driven pipelines and automated CI/CD workflows, ensuring high reliability, rapid disaster recovery and seamless B2B data exchange.
What You'll Do:
- Design, build, deploy and maintain scalable microservices, RESTful APIs and event-driven architectures using Java 17+, Spring Boot, Python and AWS integration services.
- Architect fault-tolerant, high-availability solutions across multiple AWS Availability Zones and Regions, including failover testing and reducing MTTR.
- Investigate complex production incidents, perform root cause analysis and implement observability with Amazon CloudWatch.
- Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline and CloudFormation infrastructure-as-code.
- Implement relational data models, write complex queries and tune performance on Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.
- Drive peer code reviews, champion automated testing standards (JUnit, Mockito) and mentor junior developers.
Required Qualifications:
- 7+ years of professional backend software engineering experience on distributed, high-availability production systems.
- Advanced hands-on proficiency in Java 17+, Spring Boot and Python.
- Extensive experience with AWS services including ECS/Fargate, EventBridge, SQS, SNS, Lambda, S3 and CloudWatch.
- Strong PostgreSQL / Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL skills, including schema design, query optimization and tuning.
- Experience managing automated deployments with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline and CloudFormation.
- Proficiency with automated unit and integration testing frameworks (JUnit, Mockito).
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Ability to work on-site in Washington, DC.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Active AWS certification (Solutions Architect, Developer Associate or Cloud Practitioner).
- Experience with EDI, B2B messaging integrations or high-volume transportation/logistics systems.
- Based within or easily accessible to the Northeast Corridor for periodic on-site planning sessions.
Benefits:
- Health Insurance.
- Dental Insurance.
- Vision Insurance.
- 401(k) + 401(k) matching.
- Paid time off.
- Referral Program.
About ZipStaff:
ZipStaff connects skilled technology professionals with leading organizations across the United States, matching top talent with impactful contract and full-time opportunities.
To apply, submit your resume through this posting. Qualified candidates will be contacted by a ZipStaff recruiter.