Tech Lead - Java

We are looking for an experienced Java Technical Leader with 12 - 15 years of strong hands-on experience in Java backend development, distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of leading technical initiatives, mentoring engineering teams, driving architectural decisions, and delivering highly scalable and resilient applications.

The role requires a strong balance of technical leadership and hands-on engineering expertise, with deep experience in Java, Spring Boot, Apache Kafka, microservices, cloud technologies, and distributed systems.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and development of scalable, high-performance backend applications using Java 11/17+.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to engineering teams while remaining hands-on with critical development activities.
• Design and implement microservices and distributed systems using Spring Boot and related technologies.
• Drive the adoption of event-driven architectures using Apache Kafka.
• Design and optimize Kafka producers, consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, replication, and message-processing workflows.
• Define and review application architecture, technical solutions, design patterns, and coding standards.
• Develop and maintain scalable RESTful APIs and backend services.
• Drive performance optimization, scalability, reliability, and resiliency across applications.
• Conduct code reviews and ensure adherence to engineering best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and lead root cause analysis (RCA) and resolution.
• Collaborate with product managers, architects, business stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Mentor senior developers and engineers and contribute to technical capability building within the team.
• Drive CI/CD, DevOps, automation, and engineering productivity initiatives.
• Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies and contribute to planning, estimation, and delivery.
• Establish and promote best practices around observability, security, performance, and operational excellence.

Requirements:

• 12 - 15 years of relevant software engineering experience.
• Experience designing high-volume, low-latency, and mission-critical applications.
• Strong exposure to distributed systems and scalable architectures.
• Experience in the investment banking domain is a must.
• Proven experience in technical leadership, architecture, and mentoring engineering teams.

Core Java:

• Strong hands-on experience with Java 11/17+.
• Excellent understanding of Collections Framework, Multithreading and Concurrency, Exception Handling, JVM internals and Performance Tuning, Design Patterns, OOP and SOLID principles, and Java Memory Management.

Apache Kafka:

• Extensive hands-on experience with Apache Kafka.
• Strong understanding of: Producers and Consumers, Consumer Groups, Topics, Partitions and Replication, Kafka Streams, Message Ordering and Delivery Semantics, Event-Driven Architecture, Kafka performance and scalability

Backend and Microservices:

• Strong experience with Spring Boot, Spring MVC, and Spring Data JPA/Hibernate.
• Expertise in designing RESTful APIs and microservices.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and service-to-service communication.
• Experience with resilience, fault tolerance, caching, and API performance optimization.

Database:

• Strong experience with SQL databases such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, or SQL Server.
• Good understanding of database design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, and performance tuning.

DevOps and Cloud:

• Strong understanding of Git, Maven/Gradle, and CI/CD.
• Experience with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps.
• Hands-on exposure to Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP is preferred.

Leadership and Architecture:

• Proven experience leading technical teams or major engineering initiatives.
• Ability to make sound architectural and technology decisions.
• Experience in system design, high-level design (HLD), and low-level design (LLD).
• Strong understanding of scalability, availability, reliability, and distributed-system design.
• Ability to mentor senior engineers and establish engineering best practices.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Ability to balance business priorities with long-term technical strategy.