Job Title: Java Technical Lead / Engineering Lead
Experience: 12 - 15 Years
Location: Bangalore (Hybrid)
Employment Type: Full-Time
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Java Technical Leader with 12 - 15 years of strong hands-on experience in Java backend development, distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of leading technical initiatives, mentoring engineering teams, driving architectural decisions, and delivering highly scalable and resilient applications.
The role requires a strong balance of technical leadership and hands-on engineering expertise, with deep experience in Java, Spring Boot, Apache Kafka, microservices, cloud technologies, and distributed systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design and development of scalable, high-performance backend applications using Java 11/17+.
- Provide technical leadership and guidance to engineering teams while remaining hands-on with critical development activities.
- Design and implement microservices and distributed systems using Spring Boot and related technologies.
- Drive the adoption of event-driven architectures using Apache Kafka.
- Design and optimize Kafka producers, consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, replication, and message-processing workflows.
- Define and review application architecture, technical solutions, design patterns, and coding standards.
- Develop and maintain scalable RESTful APIs and backend services.
- Drive performance optimization, scalability, reliability, and resiliency across applications.
- Conduct code reviews and ensure adherence to engineering best practices.
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and lead root cause analysis (RCA) and resolution.
- Collaborate with product managers, architects, business stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Mentor senior developers and engineers and contribute to technical capability building within the team.
- Drive CI/CD, DevOps, automation, and engineering productivity initiatives.
- Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies and contribute to planning, estimation, and delivery.
- Establish and promote best practices around observability, security, performance, and operational excellence.
Required Skills
Core Java
- Strong hands-on experience with Java 11/17+.
- Excellent understanding of:
- Collections Framework
- Multithreading & Concurrency
- Exception Handling
- JVM internals and Performance Tuning
- Design Patterns
- OOP and SOLID principles
- Java Memory Management
Apache Kafka
- Extensive hands-on experience with Apache Kafka.
- Strong understanding of:
- Producers & Consumers
- Consumer Groups
- Topics, Partitions & Replication
- Kafka Streams
- Message Ordering & Delivery Semantics
- Event-Driven Architecture
- Kafka performance and scalability
Backend & Microservices
- Strong experience with Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data JPA/Hibernate.
- Expertise in designing RESTful APIs and microservices.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems and service-to-service communication.
- Experience with resilience, fault tolerance, caching, and API performance optimization.
Database
- Strong experience with SQL databases such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, or SQL Server.
- Good understanding of database design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, and performance tuning.
DevOps & Cloud
- Strong understanding of Git, Maven/Gradle and CI/CD.
- Experience with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps.
- Hands-on exposure to Docker and Kubernetes.
- Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP is preferred.
Leadership & Architecture
- Proven experience leading technical teams or major engineering initiatives.
- Ability to make sound architectural and technology decisions.
- Experience in system design, high-level design (HLD), and low-level design (LLD).
- Strong understanding of scalability, availability, reliability, and distributed-system design.
- Ability to mentor senior engineers and establish engineering best practices.
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Ability to balance business priorities with long-term technical strategy.
Desired Qualifications
- 12 - 15 years of relevant software engineering experience.
- Experience designing high-volume, low-latency and mission-critical applications.
- Strong exposure to distributed systems and scalable architectures.
- Experience in Investment Banking Domain.
- Proven experience in technical leadership, architecture, and mentoring engineering teams.
Nice to Have
- Kafka Connect / Confluent Platform
- Elasticsearch
- Redis
- MongoDB
- Event Sourcing & CQRS
- Grafana / Prometheus
- Splunk / ELK Stack
- Cloud-native architecture
- Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
- Containerized and Kubernetes-based deployments
What We're Looking For
- Strong technical and architectural leadership.
- Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
- Ability to lead from the front while remaining technically hands-on.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Experience mentoring and developing senior engineering talent.
- Passion for building scalable, resilient, and high-performance systems.
- Ability to drive engineering excellence and take ownership of complex technical initiatives.
