Lead java developer (Rockville, MD or Tysons, VA hybrid)

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture of the identity platform across backend microservices, micro-frontends, data, and cloud infrastructure.
• Define and evolve architectural standards, patterns, and best practices; document key decisions (ADRs) and drive alignment across the team.
• Lead design reviews and make final calls on significant technical trade-offs (e.g., service boundaries, reactive vs. blocking, data modeling, caching, resiliency).
• Set and enforce non-functional standards: security, performance, scalability, availability, observability, and accessibility (WCAG).
• Own the technical roadmap, including framework upgrades and migrations (e.g., Angular 16 21, Spring Boot 2.x 4.x, Java 11 17+) and technical-debt reduction.
• Partner with security, compliance, and audit stakeholders to ensure the platform meets regulatory requirements.

Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software engineers; provide technical direction, coaching, and career development.
• Conduct and elevate code reviews; establish a strong engineering culture around quality, testing, and craftsmanship.
• Plan and coordinate team delivery: break down epics, estimate, sequence work, and manage the team's technical backlog.
• Remove blockers, balance workload, and shield the team from unnecessary disruption while keeping delivery on track.
• Foster collaboration across teams.

Hands-On Engineering (Individual Contribution)

• Design, develop, and maintain Java/Spring Boot microservices (access management, KBA/MFA, org, concierge/workflow, auditing, scheduling, search).
• Build and enhance Angular micro-frontend applications within the shared component library and micro-app architecture.
• Develop and consume RESTful and reactive (WebFlux) APIs and integrations across services.
• Implement identity and security features: authentication, authorization, entitlements, KBA, MFA (DUO), LDAP, and on-behalf-of flows.
• Work with AWS services (ECS/Fargate, RDS Aurora, SQS, SES, S3, Lambda, Elasticsearch, Parameter Store) and infrastructure-as-code provisioning.
• Contribute to and steward CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, Jenkins) and code-quality gates (SonarQube, JaCoCo).
• Design and maintain database schemas and migrations (PostgreSQL/Aurora, Liquibase, Hibernate/JPA).
• Tackle the most complex or high-risk implementation work and production issues.

Delivery & Operations

• Own release planning and coordination across the multi-repo platform and its many deployable components.
• Champion observability, incident response, and operational readiness; participate in on-call/escalation as needed.
• Drive continuous improvement of engineering processes, tooling, and delivery velocity.

Required Qualifications

Engineering Depth

• 12+ years of professional software development experience, with senior-level ownership of complex systems.
• Expert-level Java (11, 17, 21) and Spring Boot (WebFlux, Security, Data JPA/Hibernate, Cache, Retry); multi-module Maven.
• Strong Angular and TypeScript experience (Angular 16+), including RxJS, NgRx, and component/micro-frontend architecture.
• Solid experience designing microservices and REST/reactive APIs.
• Hands-on AWS experience running containerized services in production (ECS/Fargate, ALB, RDS/Aurora, SQS/SES, Lambda, S3).
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL, SQL, ORM (Hibernate/JPA), and Liquibase migrations.
• Experience with CI/CD (GitLab CI and/or Jenkins), Docker, SonarQube/JaCoCo, and Git-based workflows.
• Working knowledge of Groovy for infrastructure provisioning and build orchestration.
• Experience leveraging AI technologies and AI powered development tools such as AWS Kiro, MCP servers, and AI skills is highly preferred.

Architecture & Leadership

• 3+ years in a technical leadership, lead engineer, or team lead capacity.
• Demonstrated ownership of system-level architecture for a non-trivial platform, including documented decisions and trade-off analysis.
• Proven experience leading and mentoring engineers, running code reviews, and raising a team's technical bar.
• Track record of planning and delivering multi-component releases and coordinating across teams.
• Experience leading framework upgrades/migrations and technical-debt initiatives.
• Excellent communication skills able to explain complex technical concepts to engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Deep domain experience in identity and access management (IAM): authN/authZ, entitlements, MFA, LDAP.
• Experience with PingOne Identity Platform
• Experience with BPM/workflow engines (Activiti or similar BPMN engines).
• Experience designing and operating micro-frontend architectures at scale.
• Elasticsearch for search-driven features.
• Performance engineering with Gatling (and Scala familiarity).
• E2E testing strategy with Playwright and/or Protractor.
• Feature-flag / progressive-delivery platforms (LaunchDarkly).
• Reporting/analytics with Power BI (DAX) and SSRS.