Java Technical Lead (Onsite)

About The Role

As a Java Technical Lead, you will make an impact by leading the design, development, and delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performing enterprise applications for a major financial services client. You will be a valued member of Cognizant's Digital Engineering team, working closely with architects, product owners, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to modernize cloud-native platforms using Java, Spring Boot, microservices, Kafka, and AWS.

In This Role, You Will

• Lead the technical design and delivery of enterprise-grade Java applications, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, secure, and aligned with modern engineering best practices.
• Guide development teams through the full software development lifecycle, including solution design, code reviews, delivery planning, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
• Design and build RESTful APIs and microservices using Java, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and related frameworks while promoting clean code, reusable components, and strong engineering standards.
• Implement event-driven architecture patterns using Apache Kafka, including topic design, consumer group strategy, retry handling, and reliable messaging practices.
• Partner with DevOps and cloud engineering teams to deploy and support applications on AWS using services such as EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, API Gateway, IAM, and CloudWatch.
• Collaborate with product owners, architects, business analysts, and client stakeholders to translate business needs into practical technical solutions and provide clear delivery updates.
• Support performance optimization, observability, root cause analysis, and production readiness while helping teams continuously improve quality, automation, and reliability.

Work Model

Onsite: Based on this role's business requirements, this is an onsite position requiring work from a client or Cognizant office in Wilmington, DE.

What You Need To Have To Be Considered

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of strong hands-on experience in Java development, preferably with Java 17 or Java 21, and proven expertise designing and delivering enterprise applications.
• Deep experience with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, RESTful API development, microservices architecture, and API gateway patterns.
• Practical experience with Apache Kafka and event-driven application design, including message publishing, consuming, retry mechanisms, and resiliency patterns.
• Experience designing, deploying, and supporting applications on AWS using relevant cloud services such as EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, API Gateway, IAM, and CloudWatch.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD practices and experience with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Git, Docker, Kubernetes, or similar technologies.
• Ability to lead technical discussions, mentor developers, review code, define engineering standards, and influence technical decisions in an Agile delivery environment.
• Solid troubleshooting skills with experience supporting production applications, improving performance, and driving root cause analysis for complex technical issues.

These Will Help You Stand Out

• Experience working in banking, financial services, or highly regulated enterprise environments.
• Knowledge of security patterns such as authentication, authorization, encryption, secure API design, and compliance-focused development practices.
• Experience with observability tools and practices, including logging, monitoring, alerting, distributed tracing, and operational dashboards.
• Familiarity with resilience patterns such as circuit breakers, bulkheads, retries, timeouts, and graceful degradation.
• Ability to communicate technical strategy clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders while keeping delivery teams aligned and motivated.

Salary And Compensation

The annual salary for this position will be between $80,000 to $140,000 per year depending on the experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate. This position is also eligible for Cognizant's discretionary annual incentive program and stock awards, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant's applicable plans.

Benefits

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
• Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
• 401(k) plan and contributions
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Paid Parental Leave
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan