IT Software Engineer 5 / Java Backend Developer

Role: IT Software Engineer 5 / Java Backend Developer Location: Chicago, IL / 100% remote, but travel will be required as needed. Duration: 12-month contract /full-time 90-100% backend development, and drives AWS cloud adoption and modernization initiatives. Automotive background, Java background, Lucid background, or OpenSearch. NOTE: No full-stack roles with heavy front-end; Angular/React/TypeScript; 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 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 develops technical talent. Partners with Product Owners, Architects, and stakeholders to align technology investments with business goals. 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.