Senior Java DevOps Engineer (AWS + Kubernetes)

Job Title: Senior Java DevOps Engineer (AWS + Kubernetes)
Location:  Denver, CO (Onsite)
Duration:  6-12+ Months Contract
 

** W2-Visa-independent candidates required **

Job Summary:

Role Overview:
We are seeking a senior, motivated Software Engineer with a strong blend of technical leadership, software development, and operational expertise to join our engineering team. This hybrid role requires deep expertise in modern Java (Java 21) development using the Spring Boot framework, combined with the operational skills needed to architect, deploy, and manage highly scalable infrastructure on AWS. You will serve as the bridge between development and operations, leading end-to-end project execution, ensuring seamless, automated, and reliable software delivery, and acting as the primary support contact ("firechief") for our production environments.

Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership & Architecture: Lead the end-to-end design and implementation of microservices architecture. Drive project leadership from conception through deployment, ensuring alignment with business goals and technical best practices.
Software Development: Design, develop, test, and maintain high-performance applications and microservices primarily using Java 21 and the Spring Boot framework.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Design, implement, and manage resilient cloud infrastructure on AWS, including EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) clusters and MSK (Managed Streaming for Kafka), using Terraform.
CI/CD Pipeline Management & Deployment: Design, build, and optimize robust CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI and Harness. This includes managing application deployments onto our AWS EKS clusters using Helm charts for streamlined orchestration and release management.
Containerization & Orchestration: Package applications using Docker and manage containerized workloads in a production environment using Kubernetes.
Automation Testing: Implement and maintain automation testing frameworks using TestNG, incorporating Guice frameworks for dependency injection and Cucumber for BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) scenarios.
Monitoring & Observability: Implement and manage comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions using Datadog and Splunk to ensure high availability and proactive issue resolution.
Collaboration: On a rotational basis, act as the primary technical escalation point for QA and Production environments. Work closely with cross-functional development, QA, and operations teams to troubleshoot complex issues, perform root cause analysis.
Security & Compliance: Ensure adherence to security best practices and compliance requirements within the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines.
 
Required Skills & Qualifications:
Experience: [5-7+] years of experience in a software engineering or DevOps role, preferably within a leadership capacity or significant on-call support role.
Programming Expertise: Strong hands-on development experience with Java (Version 21 knowledge preferred) and extensive experience building applications using the Spring Boot framework.
Cloud Experience: In-depth, production-level experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) core services and managing specialized clusters (EKS, MSK, S3).
Data Technologies: Experience with Redis or AWS elasticache, and NoSQL data stores like MongoDB or AWS DocumentDB.
Leadership/Architecture: Proven ability to design complex microservice architectures and lead technical projects end-to-end.
Scalable Infrastructure Provisioning: Successfully engineered and provisioned high-throughput infrastructure on AWS using Terraform, leveraging Docker and Kubernetes orchestration to support millions of transactions.
CI/CD & Deployment: Experience with GitLab CI, Harness, and Helm for Kubernetes deployments.
Containerization: Expertise in Docker and Kubernetes orchestration.
Monitoring: Experience with Datadog and Splunk for logging and monitoring.
QA Automation: Practical experience developing automation suites using TestNG, Cucumber, and Google Guice.
Problem-Solving: Excellent troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in a mission-critical production environment.

Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have):
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or Kubernetes certification (CKA/CKAD) is a plus.
Experience with other scripting languages like Python or Go.
Familiarity with Agile/Scrum methodologies is highly valued.