Hicks

Lead Cloud Software Engineer – Java / AWS
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Chicago, Illinois Contract Sep 30, 2026
Lead Cloud Software Engineer – Java / AWS
Chicago, IL | Remote – Full Time | 12 Months
Job Details
  • Estimated Start Date: 12 October 2026
  • Building Location: Chicago office but the role can be 100% remote but there will be travel involved when needed so we want local candidates.
  • Estimated Duration: 12 months
Position’s Contributions to Work Group
  • Provides technical leadership and delivery ownership for a team of software engineers building and operating scalable cloud-native applications on AWS.
  • Drives architecture decisions, engineering best practices, and solution design across Spring Boot microservices, OpenSearch platforms, CI/CD, observability and AWS infrastructure.
  • Collaborates with product, architecture, and platform teams to deliver secure, resilient, and high-performing solutions while mentoring engineers, improving development processes, and ensuring successful execution of business objectives.
Typical Day or Week in the Role
Typical Task Breakdown
  • Leads software engineers in delivering business-critical applications.
  • Establishes technical direction and architectural standards.
  • Drives AWS cloud adoption and modernization initiatives.
  • Ensures solution scalability, performance, security, and reliability.
  • Promotes DevOps, CI/CD, automation, and AI-assisted development practices.
  • Supports incident resolution, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.

Interaction with Team
  • Mentors’ engineers and develop technical talent.
  • Partners with Product Owners, Architects, and stakeholders to align technology investments with business goals.
Education & Experience Required
  • Bachelor’s degree is a must
  • 10+ years’ experience in this capacity with 5+ years in a lead role.
Required Technical Skills
  • Java (latest would be ideal) , Spring Boot, Microservices, REST APIs, AWS (ECS/Fargate, IAM, ALB, RDS, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager), OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub, Distributed Systems, Cloud Architecture, Observability, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, SQL/NoSQL databases, Event-Driven Architecture, API Integration, Performance Optimization, and AI-assisted Development Tools.
Soft Skills
  • Strong technical leadership, communication, stakeholder management, mentoring and coaching, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, decision making, ownership, conflict resolution, adaptability, and the ability to influence cross-functional teams while driving successful delivery of complex cloud-native solutions.