IT Software Engineer 5 – Technical Lead - 2 Roles
Only W2 , strictly not for c2c
Location: Chicago, IL preferred; 100% Remote considered - Time Zone: EST or CST preferred
Travel: Occasional travel as needed
Duration: 12 months
Position Overview
Seeking a Senior/Lead Software Engineer to provide technical leadership and delivery ownership for a team building and operating scalable, cloud-native applications on AWS.
The role will drive architecture, engineering best practices, solution design, and delivery across Java/Spring Boot microservices, AWS, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, CI/CD, observability, and cloud infrastructure.
Key Responsibilities
Provide technical leadership and delivery ownership for software engineering teams.
Establish technical direction, architecture standards, and engineering best practices.
Design and develop Java/Spring Boot microservices, REST APIs, and distributed systems.
Drive AWS cloud adoption, modernization, scalability, performance, security, and reliability.
Work with ECS/Fargate, IAM, ALB, RDS, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager, and other AWS services.
Lead implementation and optimization of OpenSearch/Elasticsearch platforms.
Promote DevOps, CI/CD, automation, Infrastructure as Code, and AI-assisted development.
Support production incidents, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.
Mentor engineers and help develop technical talent.
Partner with Product Owners, Architects, platform teams, and business stakeholders to align technology solutions with business objectives.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's degree – required
10+ years of software engineering experience.
5+ years in a technical lead/leadership capacity.
Strong experience designing and delivering cloud-native applications on AWS.
Strong technical leadership, communication, mentoring, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
Ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive complex technical initiatives to successful delivery.
Required Technical Skills
Java – latest versions preferred
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
AI-Assisted Development Tools
Soft Skills
Technical Leadership | Communication | Stakeholder Management | Mentoring & Coaching | Collaboration | Problem Solving | Critical Thinking | Decision Making | Ownership | Conflict Resolution | Adaptability | Cross-Functional Influence
Red Flags
Consistent job hopping or choppy employment tenure.
Candidates without significant technical leadership experience.
Candidates lacking hands-on AWS cloud-native architecture and development experience.
