Lead Software Engineer (Java/Spring Boot)
Join an ambitious technology initiative within the sector of financial services and insurance for our client, where innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement are at the heart of every project. Working within a newly established agile team, you will contribute to the delivery of large-scale digital solutions while helping advance modern engineering practices, AI-assisted development, and exceptional client experiences. This opportunity offers the chance to influence technical direction, support team growth, and play a key role in building secure, scalable, and high-performing applications that support important business objectives.
What is in it for you:
- Salaried: $80-90 per hour.
- Incorporated Business Rate: $90-100 per hour.
- 1-year contract with a strong possibility of extension.
- Full-time schedule of 37.5 hours per week.
- Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm.
- Primarily remote with on-site attendance required once per quarter.
- Occasional travel between Toronto and Waterloo based on project requirements.
- Periodic evening, weekend, and after-hours work may be required to support project implementations, system upgrades, and deployments.
- Approximately monthly after-hours deployment support may be required, including occasional Sunday deployments.
Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with skilled Agile team members to understand user needs and design, develop and deliver high quality web applications that meet those needs
- Configure and design applications and workflows, using outside the box thinking, to create innovative ways to advance our client first strategy
- Lead AI-assisted development practices, leveraging GitHub Copilot and other AI coding tools to accelerate development velocity and improve code quality
- Design, develop, and integrate AI agents and conversational interfaces to enhance application capabilities and deliver intelligent automation solutions
- Champion secure coding practices and lead efforts to identify, prioritize, and remediate application security vulnerabilities using SAST/DAST tools
- Conduct security code reviews and ensure compliance with security standards and best practices throughout the development lifecycle
- Coach, mentor and collaborate with members of the design and development team
- Provide technical direction and guidance to projects, ensuring risks are mitigated and projects are implemented successfully
- Establish coding standards and technical best practices across the squad
- Conduct code reviews and mentor team members on technical excellence
- Support developers in removing technical blockers and guide technical implementation of user stories and features
- Communicate technical risks, dependencies, and constraints to stakeholders
- Participate in planning and refinement sessions with technical perspective and collaborate with Product Owner on technical feasibility and estimates
- Drive quality standards and testing practices; identify technical debt and propose solutions
- Monitor system performance and reliability and champion continuous improvement initiatives
- Contribute to defining timelines and plans; analyze and estimate feasibility, cost, time and scope
- Ensure coding, testing, debugging, and implementation activities are completed as required
- Participate in agile ceremonies and support on-call and incident response when needed
- Represent the squad's technical interests in cross-squad discussions and collaborate with other Tech Leads across squads for consistency
What you will need to succeed:
Required experience
- 8 to 10 years of experience.
- Extensive experience in Java backend development.
- Experience developing complex microservices.
- Experience supporting high-scale APIs.
- Experience leading and mentoring developers.
- Experience leading mixed-level teams consisting of junior and intermediate developers.
- Experience working with architects, product owners, principal software engineers, business stakeholders, and development teams.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience with unit testing.
- Experience addressing code-level vulnerabilities.
- Experience using SAST/DAST security tools.
Technical and professional skills
- Expert-level Java and Spring Boot development.
- Strong experience with REST APIs.
- Solid understanding of web applications and server technologies.
- Ability to learn internal frameworks quickly.
- Knowledge of GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent LLMs.
- Ability to leverage AI tools for assisted development, code generation, code enhancement, and productivity.
- Knowledge of Snyk, Checkmarx, SonarQube, Veracode, or similar security tools.
- Understanding of Secure SDLC practices.
- Understanding of basic threat modeling.
- Experience with Bitbucket, Jenkins, and CI/CD processes.
- Strong unit testing skills using JUnit, Mockito, and REST Assured.
- Strong communication skills.
- Ability to provide technical leadership and delivery leadership.
Preferred experience
- Experience within financial services or insurance.
- Experience with retirement products, savings products, or client experience journeys.
- Experience with agent orchestration platforms.
- Experience with conversational interfaces.
Technical and professional skills (preferred)
- Working knowledge of React.
- Understanding of Angular.
- Awareness of web accessibility (A11y).
- Basic Kubernetes experience, including pod tuning and configuration.
- Experience with Docker and containerization.
- Experience with SOAP/XML.
- Familiarity with Claude or similar AI technologies.
Soft skills
- Customer-focused mindset.
- Ability to identify opportunities for reusable components and reuse.
- Innovation mindset with enthusiasm for exploring AI technologies to solve business problems.
- Ability to evaluate AI solutions for ethical considerations, bias, privacy, and responsible AI practices.
- Flexible and adaptable approach to changing priorities and technologies.
- Strong technical mindset with the ability to drive quality standards.
- Collaborative approach to working with cross-functional teams.
- Ability and desire to lead through effective communication.
Why Recruit Action?
Recruit Action (agency permit: AP-2504511) provides recruitment services through quality support and a personalized approach. As part of the screening process, some applications may be reviewed using artificial intelligence tools. Only candidates who meet the hiring criteria will be contacted.
