Lead Java Developer

Position Title: Lead Java Developer Location: Strongsville, OH and Pittsburgh, PA Ability to work remote: 5 days onsite. Acceptable time zone(s): EST Days of the week: M-F 40 hours Working Hours: M-F 8-5 EST OT: Yes, possible Intended length of Assignment: 12/31/2026 Contract to hire W2 Function of the Group/Initiatives/Projects: We are part of a data platform in retail. DSP-COE Industry background: Finance/Banking a plus, open to other backgrounds Team Dynamic: Business analysts and testing teams at least nine on team that will be joining, team in GCC offshore and interact with the different businesses. Roles/Responsibilities: Must have: Multiple years of experience in software development with strong focus on Java / J2EE technologies. Proven experience in programming JAVA based microservices, Kafka, Kstreams, Configuration and Optimization. Strong knowledge of Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, REST APIs. Hands-on experience writing queries with Oracle. Good understanding of containerization technologies like OCP, Docker, Kubernetes Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git, Jenkins, and automated testing tools. Strong problem-solving skills and ability to lead technical teams. Provides technical guidance and support to colleagues and solution development. Preferred Skills: Experience with event-driven architecture, messaging systems like Kafka. Exposure to SAFE Agile/Scrum methodologies. Understanding of Kafka architecture (brokers, partitions, topics, producers, consumers) Experience with Kafka Producers and Consumers using the Kafka Java client Distributed Processing Concepts (Just a high level) Integration with External Systems Connecting Kafka Streams with databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra) Using Kafka Connect for external data integration Knowledge of REST APIs and how to expose data from Kafka Streams Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes for containerized deployment, OpenShift Using CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) Logging and tracing using ELK (Elasticsearch) or OpenTelemetry (High level understanding) Experience building REST APIs using Spring Boot, Spring Data and reading from databases via APIs Monitoring ( Dynatrace) and Optimization, Kafka Streams metrics (through JMX, Grafana, Prometheus) Must have skills: Years of experience: at least 8 years Software development Expert Java & J2EE Kafka & Kafka Streams, Mappers Microservices architecture Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud) REST API development Configuration management & performance optimization Oracle & SQL Container platforms (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift/OCP) CI/CD & DevOps tooling (pipelines, Git, Jenkins) Automated testing tools Flex Skills: Jira ServiceNow Confluence Education: Bachelor’s or relevant experience will be considered Role Differentiator: Growth, Opportunity, modern technologies Interview Process: Virtual interviews 1st with manager, initial screen ~30 minutes 2nd round with technical team (panel) ~45min -1 hour Possibility to 3rd round if needing further assessment