Lead Java Developer / - Springfield Missouri Office( Hybrid )

Job Title: Team Lead / Lead Engineer Java & Kafka

Work Setup:

• Hybrid, 2 days (Monday & Thursday) In office - Springfield Missouri Office

We are seeking a Senior Hands-On Engineering Lead with 10 to 15 years of experience to spearhead the architecture, technical vision, and execution of our core integration platforms. In this high-impact leadership role, you will define enterprise architectural patterns, drive technical strategy, and mentor cross-functional engineering teams while remaining actively engaged in writing high-quality code. Utilizing deep expertise in streaming technologies, you will design and implement highly scalable, event-driven microservices using Java 21 and the Spring Boot 3.x framework. You will take ownership of our streaming data pipelines via Spring Kafka, govern distributed data layers utilizing MongoDB (Spring Data MongoDB), and optimize containerized workflows using Docker, Docker Compose, and Maven. To ensure operational excellence, you will lead the implementation of system resiliency using Resilience4j (circuit breakers, retries, time limiters) and establish robust cloud-native observability frameworks utilizing OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, and Micrometer. Finally, you will enforce strict quality and deployment standards by championing automated validation pipelines built on JUnit and Testcontainers.

This is a long-term contract role with a potential to be converted to full time after 6-12 months.

Technical Skills & Tools

• Integration Developer - Java, Springboot, Kafka

• Technology Stack & Core Libraries

• Java 21 (required)

• Spring Boot 3.x (core framework)

• Kafka (Spring Kafka, event-driven microservices)

• MongoDB (Spring Data MongoDB)

• Docker & Docker Compose (development & deployment)

• Maven (build & dependency management)

• Resilience4j (circuit breaker, retry, time limiter)

• OpenTelemetry, Jaeger (distributed tracing)

• Micrometer (metrics, actuator endpoints)

• JUnit, Testcontainers (testing)

Required Skills

• Experience with microservices and event-driven architecture

• Familiarity with BOM management, dependency versioning, Maven multi-module projects

• Experience in eCommerce Domain (must)

• Leadership Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the end-to-end data integration architecture

• Drive schema contract alignment across teams and collections

• Lead design and code reviews, uphold coding standards and best practices

• Mentor developers on integration patterns, error handling, and observability

• Oversee reliability measures (DLQ, idempotency, retries, circuit breakers)

• Coordinate releases, versioning, and deployment strategies

• Ensure traceability, auditability, and compliance with documentation standards

• Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize backlog and deliverables

• Troubleshoot complex production issues and lead root cause analysis

• Maintain and improve local development tooling (Docker Compose, helper scripts)

• Has a detailed understanding of Design Frameworks and Architectural concepts.

• Advanced Java and Spring Boot (REST, configuration, dependency injection)

• Reactive Programming

• Kafka producer/consumer logic, message serialization, idempotency

• MongoDB schema design, upserts, atomic operations

• Integration and unit testing

• Debugging distributed systems and troubleshooting data pipelines

• Experience with Docker for local environments

• Understanding of tracing, metrics, and health endpoints

• Commitment to coding standards, code reviews, and documentation

• Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain ingestion, transformation, and aggregation logic for product, item, and price entities

• Align code with MongoDB schema contracts

• Validate and process external inputs (Kafka, REST, DB)

• Implement robust error handling, DLQ routing, and idempotency

• Utilize and extend shared libraries (resilience, observability, core models)

• Participate in schema gap analysis and contract alignment

• Contribute to coding standards and documentation