Senior Software Engineer

About the Role

Kunai is seeking Senior Software Engineers to join a high-impact digital payments modernization program, supporting the integration of a major card network into one of the largest financial institutions in the United States. This hands-on engineering role involves working at the intersection of legacy and modern infrastructure, ensuring the reliability of mission-critical payment systems while shaping their future architecture.

Responsibilities

• Domain & Service Architecture:
  • Apply domain-driven design to define bounded contexts, domain models, and aggregate boundaries for card-network reference data.
  • Develop and harden a Spring Boot / JPA / PostgreSQL Aurora service with Liquibase-managed schema migrations, a Drools-based business rules engine, and scheduled batch jobs.
  • Design and own integration workflows using Apache Camel, orchestrating multi-step, stateful operations.
  • Develop an event-driven backbone using Kafka, including topic/schema design and producer/consumer reliability patterns.
• Frontend & Identity:
  • Develop a micro-frontend application (Next.js/React/TypeScript) and design its convergence path into the card network's future shared micro-frontend shell.
  • Own the OAuth2/OIDC identity architecture end-to-end, including provider integration (Okta), JWT/token validation, and session/revocation design.
• Cloud & Platform:
  • Design and govern AWS IAM policy, S3, and CloudFront architecture across multiple environments.
  • Lead deployment on the organization's internal static cloud hosting platform.
  • Drive test-driven development and build continuous testing/automation pipelines as part of CI/CD.
• Scalability, Performance Testing & Validation:
  • Design and execute performance testing strategies for payment processing services.
  • Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across legacy and modern service layers.
  • Instrument and validate services running on Java, Oracle, Tomcat, WebSphere, PostgreSQL, and OpenShift.
• Application Engineering:
  • Build and maintain full-stack backend services supporting card network integration, primarily in Java with PostgreSQL and OpenShift Container Platform (OCP).
  • Contribute to application modernization efforts, migrating services to cloud-native environments.
  • Leverage AI-assisted development tooling to improve development velocity and code quality.
• General Engineering:
  • Work with PCI data purging pipelines and event-driven architecture patterns.
  • Support data lifecycle and compliance requirements using OpenShift and Oracle/PostgreSQL backends.
  • Serve as a senior contributor across teams, providing engineering depth and experience.

Required Skills & Experience

• Core Engineering:
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, primarily in Java.
  • Strong working knowledge of relational databases (Oracle and/or PostgreSQL); experience with PostgreSQL Aurora and Liquibase a plus.
  • Experience with containerized environments (OpenShift, Kubernetes, or equivalent).
  • Familiarity with Tomcat and/or WebSphere.
  • Experience with Spring Boot/JPA, Drools, and Apache Camel.
  • Working knowledge of Kafka or similar event-streaming platforms.
• Architecture & Design:
  • Practical experience with domain-driven design in production systems.
  • Ownership of authorization/data-access control design.
  • Experience designing cloud IAM, storage, and CDN architecture (AWS IAM, S3, CloudFront or equivalents).
• Frontend & Identity:
  • Experience with Next.js/React/TypeScript and micro-frontend architectures.
  • Ownership of OAuth2/OIDC identity flows, including provider integration (e.g., Okta).
• Performance Engineering:
  • Enterprise-level performance testing experience, including strategy, tooling, and execution.
  • Experience with performance profiling, load testing, and bottleneck resolution.
• Testing & CI/CD:
  • Experience driving test-driven development practices.
  • Building continuous testing/automation pipelines as part of CI/CD.
• Payments & Financial Services:
  • Background in digital payments, card processing, or financial services technology preferred.
  • Understanding of PCI compliance and secure data handling practices.
• Collaboration & Communication:
  • Ability to work in large, matrixed program environments with multiple teams and stakeholders.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to Have

• Experience with PGLogical or PostgreSQL logical replication.
• Exposure to AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot or Claude).
• Prior work on bank or card network integration programs.
• Experience in segregated or air-gapped development environments.

At this time, we are unable to provide sponsorship for this role.

Qualifications

Minimum Degree Required: Bachelor’s Degree. In lieu of a degree, demonstrating in addition to the minimum years of experience required for the role, three years of specialized training and/or progressively responsible work experience in technology for each missing year of college is required.