Software Engineer-Senior / Lead – Backend

Guidehouse is responsible for developing enterprise systems for a federal government client. This is an exciting opportunity for a software engineer with extensive development and technical leadership experience to join a collaborative, Agile team that will be building the backend of an enterprise-level application using a modern, cloud-hosted microservices architecture.  You will be in a Senior / Lead role on this team, leading by example and proactive communication, working with technical leadership in system-level design sessions, leading your team’s adherence to best practices for development, and providing mentorship and guidance.  You’ll have ample opportunity to apply your strong problem-solving skills and technical know-how from experience to design and implement elegant solutions. 

What You Will Do

• Lead aspects of design, development, and maintenance of backend services for an enterprise-class, federal web application. 

• Deliver high-quality, pattern-based, modular, security-driven code and test cases in an Agile, CI/CD environment, using Java, Spring Boot framework, and object-oriented design mapped to a relational database structure. 

• Develop code that serves as a template and example for more junior team members, to establish pattern-based development and coding standards. 

• Oversee development of more junior team members to ensure cohesion in the development approach, resulting in well-designed and implemented modular services and clean APIs. 

• Compose solutions that incorporate microservices, containerization, and RESTful Web components – leveraging DevOps pipelines to drive rapid delivery. 

• Utilize technology stack components identified by Architects, including cloud native services such as API Gateway, SQS, S3, etc., in your design and code.   

• Collaborating with Architects on system-level design, refinement and design adherence to non-functional requirements, and leading occasional proof-of-concept development. 

• Work with Frontend lead developers to design and develop clean service APIs that ensure smooth integration with the UI. 

• Conducting code reviews and approving pull requests, focused on both functional and non-functional qualities, while providing leadership to help the team continuously improve their development expertise and use of best practices such as use of patterns. 

• Collaborate with Business Analysts to refine high-quality, UX-focused, requirements-driven User Stories for development. 

• Work with QA Engineers and Security SMEs to create and implement automated functional, integration, and system-level tests. 

• Work with DevOps engineers to ensure the CI/CD pipeline correctly implements the projects gated builds, versioning, security and testing standards. 

• Troubleshoot application issues in cloud environments, using AWS monitoring and logging toolsets. 

• Utilize your outstanding communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences to advocate for preferred designs, minimization of technical debt, and Agile best practices. 

• Utilize secure coding practices and security scan results to prevent and remedy identified potential issues, early in the Sprint development cycle, and assist more junior engineers in developing strong security-oriented development practices. 

• Implement Role-based access controls and adhere to coding practices that meet sensitive data handling requirements. 

• Proactively mentor and support Junior and Mid-level Engineers and perform peer code reviews. 

• Develop and frequently deliver working, tested software that adheres to the system’s non-functional requirements and standards for quality, security, performance, and user experience. 

• Maintain well-written design and API documentation, as well as in-code documentation. 

• Think creatively and apply software engineering principles and patterns to solve challenging issues. 

What you Will Need

• U.S. Citizen 

• Minimum TEN (10) years of prior relevant experience.  

• Bachelor’s degree, Master Degree can account for 2 years experience. 

• Must be able to obtain a Public Trust level clearance.  

• Minimum SIX (6) years of experience with the following:  

• Java and Spring Boot (or similar framework) and RESTful API-based system integration. 

• Containerized microservices development within Service-based architectures in enterprise applications. 

• Modern security standards, best practices and Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC). 

• Experience developing and consuming REST APIs and Swagger/OpenAPI documentation. 

• Knowledge of relational databases, Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) (Hibernate, JPA annotations or similar) 

• Working in a government environment (preferably Federal). 

• Strong experience with design and implementation utilizing cloud services (AWS preferred) such as S3, AWS API Gateway, SQS, Lambda, etc. 

• Strong experience developing containerized microservices, running on EKS (Kubernetes) or similar. 

• Experience integrating with Identity Providers for sign-in, including OpenID Connect/OAuth, SAML. 

• Strong background with Agile on moderate-sized (multi-team) project, using iterative, feedback-driven design and delivery process, and providing technical leadership and mentoring for continuous improvement of an Agile team. 

• A strong ability to identify and lead implementation of design patterns and a strong understanding of what different technologies do well for different situations.  Ability to work both independently and collaboratively, with guidance from technical leads. 

• Working familiarity with database administration tasks and SQL DDL. 

• A strong understanding of application load and performance optimization, including with large data sets, and ability to design software to meet these and other non-functional requirements. 

• Experience leading design and development of cohesive microservices APIs, working with API client owners, including Frontend Leads, as well as serverless functions (Lambda). 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and ability to clearly advocate the benefits, drawbacks or risks of various design options, engage in technical discussions with stakeholders, as well as present and demonstrate your team’s work to your team and the Product Owner. 

• Strong experience with Git, including branching, pull requests, etc. 

What Would Be Nice To Have

• Certifications-AWS Certified Developer (or similar), or AWS Solutions Architect Associate - preferred

• Familiarity with Message-driven design patterns. 

• Familiarity with financial systems. 

• Some UI / front-end development experience (React). 

• Familiarity with the ATO process, and FISMA Moderate or High environments.