Lead Java Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Java Lead Engineer / Engineering Team Lead (hands-on technical leadership)
• Location: Washington, DC / Rockville, MD / McLean, VA (Hybrid: 3 days onsite)
• Duration: 6 months with possible extension
• Interview: 1 round video, final round onsite

Description

Lead the development and operation of a large-scale enterprise identity and access management platform. Own end-to-end technical architecture across backend microservices, front-end micro-frontends, data, integrations, and cloud infrastructure, while mentoring engineers and driving delivery ownership. This role is 50–60% hands-on engineering and architecture and 40–50% technical leadership, planning, and stakeholder collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical architecture across backend services, front-end applications, data, integrations, and cloud infrastructure
• Establish architectural standards, engineering patterns, and development best practices
• Lead architecture and design reviews around scalability, resiliency, security, performance, and maintainability
• Define standards for availability, observability, accessibility, and application security
• Lead framework upgrades, modernization initiatives, and technical-debt reduction
• Partner with security, compliance, product, and other technology teams to meet enterprise and regulatory requirements
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and coaching to a team of software engineers
• Strengthen engineering culture focused on code quality, testing, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Improve code-review practices; break down initiatives, estimate and sequence work, and manage the technical backlog
• Identify and remove technical blockers and coordinate delivery plans across cross-functional teams
• Design, develop, and maintain Java/Spring Boot microservices and enterprise APIs
• Build and enhance Angular/TypeScript applications and micro-frontends
• Develop RESTful and reactive APIs (Spring WebFlux)
• Implement identity and security capabilities: authentication, authorization, entitlement, MFA, LDAP, and related IAM functions
• Build and operate cloud-native applications using AWS
• Design and maintain relational database schemas, integrations, and migrations
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and code-quality initiatives
• Coordinate releases and champion observability, operational readiness, and incident response
• Improve engineering processes, development tooling, automation, and delivery efficiency; support production troubleshooting and escalations

Requirements

• 12+ years of professional software development experience owning complex enterprise applications
• 3+ years of experience in a technical leadership role (Technical Lead/Lead Engineer/Engineering Team Lead)
• Advanced Java and Spring Boot expertise including Spring Security, Spring WebFlux, and Data JPA/Hibernate
• Strong Angular and TypeScript experience (including RxJS and modern component architecture; Angular 16 preferred)
• Experience designing and developing microservices and RESTful/reactive APIs
• Hands-on AWS experience with ECS/Fargate, RDS/Aurora, SQS, Lambda, S3, and load balancing
• Strong PostgreSQL, SQL, Hibernate/JPA, and database migrations experience
• Experience with Docker, Git, Maven, CI/CD, GitLab CI and/or Jenkins
• Experience with automated testing and code-quality tools such as SonarQube and JaCoCo
• Demonstrated ownership of system-level architecture and ability to make complex technical trade-offs
• Proven ability to mentor engineers, lead technical reviews, and improve engineering standards
• Experience coordinating complex releases and modernization/framework-upgrade initiatives
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders

Benefits

• Hybrid work model (3 days onsite)
• Contract opportunity (6 months) with possible extension