Tech Lead – Java/Data (Banking Domain)

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Tech Lead (Java) to lead the design and delivery of high‑performance, secure, and resilient banking applications. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in Java/JVM technologies, microservices, APIs, and integration patterns—combined with hands‑on leadership of agile delivery teams in highly regulated banking environments.

You will drive end‑to‑end solution design, oversee engineering quality, mentor developers, and partner with Product, Architecture, Security, and Operations to deliver mission‑critical systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end‑to‑end technical design for Java-based microservices and APIs, ensuring alignment with architecture and security standards.
• Define and implement non-functional requirements including performance, scalability, resilience, observability, and security.
• Review and create technical designs (HLD/LLD), ensure clean architecture and DDD principles.
• Develop high-quality code using Java 11/17, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and guide coding standards, code reviews, and secure-by-design practices.
• Optimize application performance including JVM tuning, connection management, and thread optimization.
• Design and build integrations with core banking and financial systems using APIs, messaging, and event-driven patterns (Kafka/RabbitMQ).
• Collaborate with data teams on models, lineage, masking, and compliance requirements.
• Design and implement data ingestion, transformation, and ETL/ELT pipelines across on‑prem and cloud data platforms.
• Partner with Data Engineering teams to design data models, schema evolution, lineage, masking, quality checks, and compliance workflows.
• Work with DevOps to enable CI/CD, automated testing, and modern deployment patterns (blue‑green, canary).
• Implement observability solutions including logging, tracing, metrics, SLIs/SLOs, and dashboards.
• Ensure strong security and compliance aligned with banking standards (OAuth2/OIDC, TLS, MAS TRM, PCI-DSS, GDPR).
• Lead engineering teams (onshore/offshore), manage delivery plans, risks, and align with product roadmaps.
• Provide reliable estimates, delivery timelines, and stakeholder updates throughout the SDLC.
• Establish shift-left testing, TDD/BDD, contract tests, and test data strategies.
• Ensure robust UAT readiness, release documentation, and production runbooks.
• Drive root cause analysis (RCA), post‑incident reviews, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 8–12 years of total experience, with 3+ years as a Tech Lead in complex, distributed systems.

Strong proficiency in:

• Java 11+/17+, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, REST/GraphQL, JPA/Hibernate
• API Gateway patterns, service mesh (Istio/Linkerd) exposure is a plus
• Messaging: Kafka/RabbitMQ; Datastores: RDBMS (Oracle/PostgreSQL), NoSQL (Redis/Cassandra/MongoDB)
• Build/CI/CD: Maven/Gradle, Jenkins/GitLab/Azure DevOps; Containers: Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift
• Testing: JUnit, Testcontainers, WireMock/PACT, Cucumber; Performance: JMeter/Gatling
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, ELK/Splunk
• Security: OAuth2/OIDC, Keycloak/Okta/AAD, mTLS, Vault/KMS
• Solid understanding of networking (DNS, TLS, proxies, firewalls) and Linux.
• Solid background in data platforms, ETL/ELT pipelines, and distributed data processing.

Preferred Banking Domain Experience

• Built or modernized solutions in one or more of:
• Payments (ISO 20022, SWIFT), Cards, Lending, Core Banking, Treasury/Markets, Trade Finance
• Risk & Regulatory (Basel, BCBS 239), Fraud/AML/KYC, Customer 360
• Experience with CAB/ITIL, deployment windows, multi‑zone/DMZ patterns, and HA/DR architectures across data centers or cloud regions.
• Exposure to low-latency trading, event-driven and near real-time processing, and reconciliation controls.

Soft Skills

• Strong leadership and mentoring; able to elevate engineering practices across squads.
• Clear communication with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Outcome‑oriented, pragmatic decision‑making; balances delivery speed with risk and quality.
• Excellent documentation and presentation skills.

Certifications (Nice to Have)

• Oracle Certified Professional: Java SE, or equivalent.
• Spring Professional, CKA/CKAD, Red Hat OpenShift.
• Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP Architect/Developer).
• Security (CCSP, CSSLP) or ITIL Foundation.