Lead Java Developer

Title: Lead Java Developer

Location: Charlotte, NC (Onsite)

Type: Contract

Role Summary

The Lead Java Developer will take ownership of end to end design and delivery of Java based microservices, lead a team of developers, and collaborate with architects and product managers to shape technical solutions. This role is both hands on and leadership oriented, bridging engineering execution with architectural direction.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of scalable, resilient, and secure microservices and event driven distributed systems.
• Drive technical decision making, solution design, and code quality across the team.
• Guide, mentor, and support developers through code reviews, pair programming, and technical coaching.
• Work with product managers, architects, and stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Oversee performance optimization, system reliability improvements, and engineering best practices.
• Ensure adherence to security standards, compliance requirements, and architectural guidelines.
• Contribute to continuous improvement, evaluating new technologies, frameworks, and patterns.
• Support deployment pipelines, release planning, and DevOps best practices.

Required Qualifications

• 10 15 years of experience in Java development, including 5+ years leading technical teams or playing a lead developer role.
• Expert level proficiency in Java 11+, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and distributed application design.
• Strong experience designing microservices, event-driven systems, and APIs.
• Deep understanding of relational and NoSQL databases, schema design, and performance tuning.
• Experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, or other event streaming technologies.
• Strong grounding in cloud-native development, DevOps practices, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and cross team collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with API gateways, service mesh, caching layers, and distributed tracing.
• Exposure to Google ADK (Agent Developer Kit) for building enterprise grade AI agents, workflows, and tool-augmented conversational systems.
• Hands-on experience with agent frameworks such as:
• LangChain / LangGraph
• OpenAI Assistants API
• HuggingFace Transformers Agents / Autogen
• Ability to design and integrate AI toolchains for workflow automation, including function-calling agents, task decomposition strategies, and memory-enabled agent systems.
• Prior experience building or integrating autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents in production-like environments (e.g., customer service agents, coding agents, troubleshooting agents).
• Exposure to Google Vertex AI, Gemini APIs, Amazon Bedrock, or Azure OpenAI Service for deploying and operationalizing GenAI solutions.