Java Enterprise Solutions Architect

Our challenge: We are looking for a highly experienced Java Application Architect III to lead the design, development, and continuous improvement of our enterprise-scale API gateway platform. This role is ideal for a technically deep engineer with extensive hands-on experience in API and gateway solutions, combined with strong architectural influence, standards enforcement, and best practice guidance across multiple teams.

Responsibilities:

·         Define an architectural vision and solution architecture that aligns with business strategy, enterprise architecture principles, and technology platform choices.

·         Articulate the solution intent and operating environment, identify primary systems/subsystems and their interfaces, and define non-functional requirements.

·         Ensure solutions are fit for purpose by collaborating with stakeholders and vendors, while assessing the impact of strategic design decisions.

·         Define and enforce API design standards, including RESTful principles, versioning, error handling, and backward compatibility.

·         Lead the architecture and implementation of scalable, secure, and observable API gateway solutions supporting high-throughput, business-critical services.

·         Lead a team of 25+ people in the project.

·         Drive the evolution of API management practices, including onboarding governance, lifecycle management, deprecation, and retirement strategies.

·         Implement and optimize gateway functionalities such as routing, transformation, traffic management, authentication, and policy enforcement.

·         Develop automation scripts and operational workflows using Python to improve platform reliability and efficiency.

·         Design and implement automated API testing frameworks covering functional, integration, regression, and performance validation.

·         Ensure comprehensive observability through metrics, logs, traces, alerting, and SLO-driven monitoring.

·         Collaborate with cross-functional teams including application developers, security, and operations to align architecture with organizational standards.

·         Mentor engineering teams, influence technical decisions, and shape platform-level improvements and best practices.

·         Integrate API gateways with enterprise identity providers and security platforms, ensuring compliance and security.

Requirements:

·         Architecting for high throughput, low latency, zero downtime and zero data loss using a microservices architecture

·         Solid software or platform engineering experience.

·         Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating API platforms or gateway solutions in production environments.

·         Deep expertise in API design: RESTful APIs, versioning, backward compatibility, and error-handling patterns.

·         Strong experience with security protocols such as OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, and API key management.

·         Proven ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in high-throughput, distributed systems.

·         Advanced proficiency in Java, with experience in API, gateway, or service-oriented architectures.

·         Strong Python skills for automation, tooling, and operational workflows.

·         Extensive experience with designing and implementing automated API testing (functional, integration, regression, performance).

·         Expertise in observability and telemetry, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, and SLO-driven monitoring.

·         Hands-on experience with Git, code reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code practices.

Desired Qualifications:

·         Experience with enterprise-grade API gateway platforms such as Apigee, Kong, Azure API Management, or AWS API Gateway.

·         Strong understanding of API lifecycle management, including onboarding, governance, versioning, deprecation, and retirement at scale.

·         Practical experience defining and enforcing traffic management and security policies like rate limiting, throttling, quotas, and request/response transformations.

·         Familiarity with service mesh, ingress controllers, or edge routing technologies and their integration with API gateways.

·         Experience integrating APIs with enterprise identity providers and security platforms.

·         Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment strategies for API gateway configurations.

·         Exposure to performance/load testing to validate scalability, resiliency, and failure handling.

·         Strong architectural mindset with the ability to identify systemic risks and drive platform-level improvements.

·         Demonstrated leadership in mentoring engineers and influencing cross-team technical strategies.

·         Excellent collaboration skills across application, platform, security, and operations teams.