Role: Principal Java Engineer (Java / Spring Boot / Microservices / Kafka / Docker / Kubernetes / Cloud [Azure/AWS]), Seeking an enterprise-level Principal Java Engineer with 12+ years of software engineering experience for a 6-month contract role in New Jersey (Hybrid setup). The candidate will provide hands-on technical leadership, architectural guidance, and critical code development for large-scale distributed systems and enterprise application modernization initiatives. This role demands expert-level mastery in core Java/JDK, Spring Boot, Microservices, event-driven architecture (Kafka), cloud platforms (Azure or AWS), and container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes).

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Hands-On Architecture: Define enterprise technical direction, establish coding standards, and remain hands-on in core architecture design, critical code development, and code reviews across multiple development squads.
• Microservices & Event-Driven Systems: Architect, build, and optimize high-throughput distributed microservices and event-driven integration flows leveraging Apache Kafka and REST APIs.
• Legacy Modernization & Cloud Native: Drive decomposition of legacy monolithic applications into modern, cloud-native microservices containerized with Docker and orchestrated on Kubernetes (AKS/EKS) across Azure or AWS environments.
• DevSecOps & Performance Engineering: Oversee CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions/Jenkins/Azure DevOps), enforce SonarQube quality gates, perform deep-dive performance tuning, and lead root-cause analysis (RCA) on production incidents.
• Data & Observability Architecture: Design data models across relational databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server) and NoSQL engines (MongoDB/Redis), while establishing full-stack observability (Dynatrace, Splunk, OpenTelemetry).

• Core Experience: 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience building complex, high-concurrency enterprise Java systems.
• Primary Tech Stack: Expert-level proficiency in Java/JDK, Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and distributed Microservices architecture.
• Messaging & Cloud Containerization: Demonstrated expertise with Kafka, REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud engineering on Azure or AWS.
• Database & Tooling: Strong relational database background (PostgreSQL/Oracle/SQL Server) and DevSecOps proficiency (Maven/Gradle, Jenkins/GitHub Actions, JUnit/Mockito).
• Work Setup & Location: Hybrid setup in New Jersey.