Lead Software Engineer - Email, DNS, SES, Java Development
No C2C, IC or 1099 candidates allowed for this position
Must be Direct W2 - 100% Remote - MST OR CST Preferred
Top 5 Technical Skills:
- AWS architecture and development
- Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
- Enterprise Email SME — deliverability, DNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and sender reputation
- Lead-level Java / Spring Boot development
Top 3 Soft Skills:
- Strong technical leadership
- Takes ownership and responsibility for the solution and drives work to completion
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Job Description:
We are seeking a Lead Developer / Email Platform SME to lead the design and development of a new enterprise-scale email and messaging platform built primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
This individual will serve as the technical lead for the solution and must bring deep, hands-on expertise with Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), enterprise email delivery, sender reputation management, DNS/email authentication, and high-volume transactional communications.
This is not simply an application development position. The successful candidate must understand the complete email delivery lifecycle—from application-generated communication requests through domain authentication, routing, delivery, bounce/complaint handling, reputation monitoring, and operational support.
The platform will use AWS SES with supporting application services developed primarily in Java and Spring Boot.
The Lead Developer will be expected to take ownership of the solution, provide technical direction to other developers, work directly with architects and business stakeholders, and remain hands-on throughout design and implementation.
Lead the technical design and development of an enterprise email and messaging platform using AWS SES and related AWS services.
Serve as the project's Email Subject Matter Expert, establishing enterprise email architecture, standards, and best practices.
Design and implement highly scalable services for generating, processing, routing, and delivering transactional and enrollment-related email communications.
Lead the implementation and configuration of Amazon SES, including:
Verified domains and sending identities
Configuration sets
Dedicated IP strategy where applicable
Sending pools and traffic segmentation
Bounce and complaint processing
Suppression management
Delivery event tracking
Reputation monitoring
Sending quotas and production readiness
Own the email domain authentication strategy, including:
SPF
DKIM
DMARC
DNS configuration and validation
Return-Path / MAIL FROM configuration
Domain alignment
Sender authentication and deliverability
Establish and maintain strong email sender reputation and deliverability across major mailbox providers.
Design mechanisms for identifying and responding to hard bounces, soft bounces, complaints, suppression events, and delivery failures.
Develop Java/Spring Boot services and APIs supporting email generation, communication requests, processing, routing, and delivery.
Design and implement integration between application components and AWS messaging services.
Support both individual and batch communication processing for high-volume enterprise workloads.
Develop reusable communication services supporting templates, variables, merge fields, business rules, branding, and document/email routing.
Participate in the design of template management and communication-builder capabilities.
Implement services capable of accepting structured communication requests, including XML/JSON and application-generated requests.
Design asynchronous, resilient processing patterns for large-volume email workloads.
Implement event-driven processing for email delivery events and status updates.
Integrate email delivery events into application databases, dashboards, reporting, reconciliation, and operational monitoring.
Design for reliability, fault tolerance, scalability, security, monitoring, and operational supportability.
Establish logging, tracing, alerting, and production support standards for the platform.
Review designs and code produced by other developers and provide hands-on technical leadership.
Troubleshoot complex application, AWS, DNS, messaging, and email-deliverability issues.
Work closely with architects, infrastructure teams, security teams, product owners, and business stakeholders.
Take ownership of technical decisions and drive work through implementation and production deployment
Required Expertise:
Extensive hands-on experience designing or supporting enterprise email platforms.
Expert-level knowledge of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).
Strong understanding of enterprise transactional email and high-volume email-delivery architectures.
Demonstrated experience managing and protecting sender and domain reputation.
Expert knowledge of email authentication and DNS technologies including:
Strong understanding of:
Experience troubleshooting deliverability issues involving major mailbox providers and enterprise email gateways.
AWS
Strong hands-on AWS experience, particularly with services supporting scalable messaging and application platforms, including:
Amazon SES
AWS messaging/SMS capabilities
Amazon SNS and/or event-driven messaging
Amazon S3
AWS database services
AWS monitoring and logging services
IAM and AWS security practices
Experience designing event-driven or asynchronous AWS architectures is strongly preferred.
Java / Application Development
Extensive hands-on Java development experience.
Strong Spring Boot development experience.
Experience designing and building REST APIs and enterprise application services.
Experience developing high-volume, asynchronous, and batch-processing applications.
Strong understanding of:
Ability to remain hands-on in development while providing technical leadership to the broader team.
Technical Leadership
The successful candidate must operate as a true technical lead rather than simply a senior individual contributor.
Responsibilities include:
Owning the technical solution.
Making architecture and implementation decisions.
Establishing development standards and best practices.
Providing direction and mentorship to developers.
Conducting design and code reviews.
Identifying technical risks before they become project issues.
Driving technical issues to resolution without requiring constant direction.
Coordinating across development, infrastructure, security, architecture, and business teams.
Clearly communicating technical issues, alternatives, risks, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate has previously built, modernized, or served as the technical owner of a large-scale enterprise transactional email platform.
They understand that successful email delivery involves substantially more than calling an email API. They understand DNS, authentication, reputation, deliverability, bounce and complaint management, monitoring, throttling, operational support, and the application architecture surrounding the email platform.
This individual should be equally comfortable discussing DMARC alignment and SES reputation metrics with an infrastructure engineer, designing a Spring Boot service with developers, reviewing an AWS architecture with an architect, and explaining platform risks or design decisions to business leadership.
