Senior Java Developer with Kafka

This position is offered on a W2 basis only.
We are able to consider candidates who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. without employer sponsorship, including:
C2C arrangements and third-party candidates will not be considered.

Role: Senior Java Developer

Location: NYC, NY 10004 - Onsite hybrid (3 days on-site per week)

Interview Process - 1+1 client In-person Technical interview/discussion)

About the Role
We are building Polaris, a next-generation front-to-back platform for post-trade processing, real-time risk monitoring, and cloud-native orchestration. We are seeking a hands-on, high-impact Java developer with a proven track record in designing and operating large-scale distributed systems. You will contribute to the architecture, implementation, and operations of a low-latency, high-throughput trading data path, ensuring scalability, resiliency, recoverability, observability, and developer productivity.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain high-performance, low-latency messaging and processing components (Java-based) for real-time trading data.
• Develop and operate resilient microservices and streaming pipelines using Kafka and related technologies.
• Build and optimize storage and access patterns with modern databases (e.g., RocksDB, MongoDB, MemSQL/SingleStore) for real-time analytics.
• Lead efforts to improve SDLC, testing (shift-left), configuration, and developer experience (CI/CD, automation, tooling).
• Architect and implement observability frameworks: metrics, tracing (Tempo/Jaeger), logging, and alerting for highly available systems.
• Collaborate with Platform/Cloud-native teams to design Kubernetes-based deployments, scalability, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Implement backpressure, idempotency, retries with exponential backoff and jitter, circuit breakers, and fault-tolerant patterns.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and code reviews; communicate effectively with stakeholders across teams.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response, driving root-cause analysis and post-mortems.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software development, with a strong emphasis on Java and distributed systems.
• Deep hands-on experience building large-scale, low-latency, high-throughput systems.
• Expertise with messaging and streaming technologies, especially Kafka (producers/consumers, transactions, exactly-once processing).
• Proficiency with data stores used in real-time contexts (RocksDB, MongoDB, MemSQL/SingleStore) and time-series considerations.
• Solid understanding of concurrency, memory models, locking vs. lock-free approaches, and performance tuning in Java.
• Experience designing and operating in Kubernetes-based environments; familiarity with cloud-native patterns, DevOps, and observability tooling.
• Strong problem-solving, debugging, and performance profiling skills.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership capabilities.
• Bonus: Python scripting experience; knowledge of PrometheGrafana, Tempo/Jaeger, and cloud platforms (AWS/Google Cloud Platform/Azure).

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with front-to-back architectural patterns in trading or financial services.
• Knowledge of, or experience with, RocksDB, distributed caches, and columnar stores.
• Familiarity with time-series data modeling and windowed computations.
• Exposure to risk monitoring, market data feeds, and post-trade workflows.