Technical Architect - Java

As a technical architect for Java, you will own the architecture for one or more product line platforms, designing solutions that meet rigorous non-functional requirements around scalability, security, reliability, and performance while serving hundreds of enterprise clients globally.

This is a hands-on architect role with a 50/50 split between architecture and execution: you'll spend half your time on architectural design, technical decision-making, and design reviews, and the other half on hands-on coding, prototyping, and unblocking the team. You'll partner closely with product managers, engineering leaders, and customer-facing teams to translate business needs into technical solutions that scale.

A key part of this role is driving modernisation and technical debt management, evolving legacy components toward modern architectures, retiring outdated patterns, and ensuring the platform remains future-ready. You'll also mentor a team of senior and mid-level engineers, raise the technical bar across engineering, and shape the long-term technical roadmap.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Architecture and Design:

• Own the end-to-end architecture and technical roadmap across one or more product lines.
• Design solutions that meet rigorous NFRs: scalability, security, reliability, performance, observability, and cost efficiency.
• Define and evolve architectural patterns (event-driven, API-led, microservices, batch, streaming) and select the right approach for each business problem.
• Lead architectural reviews, document decisions through ADRs (Architecture Decision Records), and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards.

Hands-On Engineering:

• Write production-quality code for critical components, prototypes, and proofs-of-concept.
• Conduct code and design reviews; set the bar for code quality, testing rigour, and engineering craftsmanship.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and partner with SRE/DevOps on incident response and root-cause analysis.

Modernisation and Technical Debt Management:

• Identify and prioritise technical debt across the platform; build and execute a modernisation roadmap.
• Lead migration efforts from legacy frameworks and middleware to modern, cloud-native alternatives.
• Establish patterns for incremental modernisation without disrupting customer-facing services.

Technical Leadership and Mentorship:

• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers on system design, architectural thinking, and engineering best practices.
• Drive adoption of best practices in DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, and observability across the team.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, continuous learning, and ownership.

Stakeholder Management and Strategy:

• Partner with global product, engineering, and customer-facing leaders to align technical strategy with business goals.
• Translate business requirements into technical solutions and clearly communicate trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies (AI/ML, event streaming, service mesh) and bring insights back to inform the roadmap.

The core requirements for the job include the following:

Experience and Education:

• 10+ years of overall software engineering experience, with 4+ years in a technical architect or equivalent role.
• A bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field.
• Proven track record of delivering high-performance, production-grade products at scale.

Core Technical Stack:

• Deep expertise in Core Java (Java 11+), Spring / Spring Boot, and Hibernate / JPA.
• Hands-on experience designing and building RESTful APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems.
• Strong experience with Apache Camel or equivalent integration/messaging frameworks.
• Solid understanding of messaging and streaming systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, JMS, SQS).

Cloud and Infrastructure:

• Production experience with AWS (EC2 Lambda, S3 RDS, SQS/SNS, API Gateway, CloudWatch).
• Working knowledge of containerisation and orchestration, Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and CloudFormation).

Data and Search:

• Strong experience with Elasticsearch / OpenSearch for search, indexing, and analytics use cases.
• Proficiency in RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle) and at least one NoSQL store (MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB).
• Experience with database performance tuning, query optimisation, and data modelling at scale.

Architecture and Engineering Practices:

• Strong grasp of architectural patterns: microservices, event-driven, API-led, CQRS/event sourcing, and SOA.
• Experience designing for non-functional requirements: scalability, security, reliability, performance, and observability.
• Familiarity with API security and identity (OAuth 2.0 OIDC, JWT, and API gateways).
• Strong understanding of observability tooling logs, metrics, and traces (ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, and OpenTelemetry).

Leadership and Soft Skills:

• Demonstrated experience leading and mentoring engineering teams of 8-15 engineers.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate technical trade-offs to both engineers and business stakeholders.
• Experience working in a global, distributed development environment across multiple time zones.

Good-to-Have:

• Working knowledge of Python and/or Node.js for tooling, automation, or polyglot services.
• Exposure to AI/ML integration, LLM-based services, vector databases, RAG patterns, or ML model deployment.
• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) and API management platforms (Apigee, Kong).
• Familiarity with front-end frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) for a full-stack architectural context.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional) or equivalent cloud certifications.
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical writing / public speaking on engineering topics.

Preferred Background:

• Experience at a B2B or B2C product / SaaS company delivering software at scale.
• Domain exposure to HR tech, recruitment marketing, marketing automation, or related digital domains is a plus.

Nice to Have:

• Systems thinker. You can zoom out to see the big architectural picture and zoom in to debug a single line of code.
• Pragmatic decision-maker: You make sound trade-offs between speed, quality, cost, and complexity and clearly communicate the reasoning.
• Strong sense of ownership. You take problems end-to-end, from design through production, and don't pass them on at the first handoff.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, you can shape direction in fast-moving, evolving environments without waiting for perfect requirements.
• Clear communicator. You explain complex technical concepts simply to engineers, product, and business stakeholders alike.
• Curious and adaptive: You actively track industry trends and bring new ideas, tools, and patterns to the team.
• Collaborative leader, you lift the team, give credit generously, and create space for engineers to grow.

Skills

Core Java, Java, Solution Architecture, Spring, Spring Boot