Hicks

Java Developer
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
ChicagoIllinois Contract Sep 10, 2026
Java Developer
 Chicago, IL | Hybrid | 12 Months

Job Details

  • Estimated Start Date: 7 September 2026
  • Building Location: Chicago office
  • Remote Possibility: Remote - Hybrid
  • Additional Comments: 2 days in office (Monday and Wednesday)
  • Daily Schedule: Monday thru Friday; 1st shift
  • Estimated Duration: 12 months

Job Description

Lead Software Engineer provides technical leadership in design, development, testing and deployment of state-of-the-art digital platform hosted on AWS. This position will build a world class platform to host a wide range of digital applications.

Position's Contributions to Work Group

  • As a Lead Software Engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing backend RESTful API web services using Microservices architecture.

Typical Day or Week in the Role

Typical Task Breakdown

  • Lead the design and development of enterprise-scale REST APIs and microservices using Java 21+, Spring Boot, Apigee API Gateway, and AWS cloud services.
  • Architect API-first solutions, define service contracts, payload schemas, and OpenAPI/Swagger specifications.
  • Lead solution decomposition by breaking business requirements into technical designs, user stories, and implementation tasks.
  • Guide engineers in developing secure service-to-service integrations using OAuth 2.0, JWT, and enterprise entitlement-based authorization models.
  • Serve as the technical lead for complex initiatives, driving architecture decisions, design reviews, and code reviews.
  • Collaborate with product owners, UI development teams, architects, and partner teams to ensure successful delivery of customer-focused solutions.
  • Establish engineering best practices for reliability, scalability, observability, security, and maintainability.
  • Drive quality engineering practices including automated testing, performance testing, load testing, and production readiness reviews.
  • Lead troubleshooting and resolution of complex production issues.
  • Create and maintain technical documentation, operational runbooks, and engineering standards.
  • Drive end-to-end software ownership from design through deployment, monitoring, support, and continuous improvement.

Interaction with Team

  • New team: 12-13 folks (lead engineers, Sr software engineers, etc)

Education & Experience Required

  • Degree with 10+ years' experience

Required Technical Skills

  • Software Development: Knowledge of software development tools and activities; ability to produce software products or systems in line with product requirements.
  • Software Product Design/Architecture: Knowledge of software product design; ability to convert market requirements into the software product design.
  • Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.

Top Candidates Will Also Have

  • Extensive software development experience using Java 17+ and SpringBoot RESTful API development, including experience with API management and gateway platforms like Apigee.
  • Proficiency in deploying and maintaining software within public cloud environments, such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Proven ability to own the end-to-end software lifecycle, including writing comprehensive automated tests (unit, integration, and end-to-end) using frameworks like JUnit and Mockito.
  • Experience designing and implementing Event-Driven Architectures using message streaming solutions (eg: AWS Kinesis, AWS SQS, AWS SNS, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, Apache ActiveMQ, Azure Event Hub)
  • Deep understanding of datastores, including relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, AWS RDS/Aurora), NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra, AWS DynamoDB), search engines (Elasticsearch), caching (Redis), and vector databases.
  • Hands-on experience configuring and deploying software via CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or GoCD.
  • Familiarity with leveraging AI-assisted coding companions, such as GitHub Copilot or Cursor, to accelerate the software development lifecycle.
  • Demonstrated success working within an Agile development framework, ideally Scrum.