Senior Java Backend Developer - Contingent

Public Trust Eligibility Required

Aretum is a mission-driven organization committed to delivering innovative, technology-enabled solutions to our customers across defense, civilian, and homeland security sectors. Our teams work at the intersection of strategy, technology, and transformation, helping agencies solve their most critical challenges. We believe in investing in our people and creating a culture where collaboration, inclusion, and professional growth are at the forefront.

Aretum is seeking a Senior Java Backend Developer to join our team supporting a large-scale federal technology modernization program. As a Senior Java Backend Developer, you will be embedded within a cross-functional Agile scrum team, leading the design and implementation of Java backend services, APIs, and data integrations for a serverless, cloud-native microservices architecture running on AWS. You will independently interpret complex software requirements and design specifications, decompose them into working, tested, and maintainable code, and guide mid-junior level developers through the same process.

You will own meaningful portions of the backend codebase, make day-to-day architectural decisions within the team's scope, participate in cross-team technical discussions, and contribute to the technical health of the program by reviewing code, improving automation, and hardening services against production failure modes. This role is a hands‑on, senior‑level development position that requires strong judgment, deep Java backend experience, and the ability to deliver reliably inside a SAFe Agile framework.

Due to the nature of our work as a federal consulting organization, employees may be expected to handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and must adhere to applicable safeguarding and compliance requirements.

• Lead the design of software tools, subsystems, and reusable components within the team's scope, contributing to domain analysis and coordinating implementation with teammates
• Independently interpret software requirements and design specifications, translating them into working, tested, and maintainable code
• Mentor junior-mid level developers and support their growth through pairing, design review, and constructive code review
• Review existing backend programs and propose refinements to reduce operating time, simplify code, and improve current techniques
• Contribute to software development effort and schedule estimation during sprint planning and backlog refinement
• Design, develop, test, and maintain Java backend microservices and REST APIs across the program's cloud-native architecture, adhering to established coding standards, architectural patterns, and the team's Definition of Done
• Own the design and tuning of Postgre
  
  SQL database schemas, queries, and data access layers for the services you develop, including migration strategy
• Design and implement Elasticsearch / Open Search index structures, query patterns, and reindexing strategies for search-driven features
• Integrate backend services with AWS S3 for file storage, AWS SNS and SQS for event-based messaging, and AWS RDS for relational persistence
• Build and maintain containerized Java services that run on AWS Elastic Container Service, including appropriate logging, metrics, health checks, and operational readiness for deployment to isolated VPC networking environments
• Contribute to Python backend services where the team's work requires it, applying the same standards of testability, readability, and maintainability
• Design, implement, and maintain Git Lab CI/CD pipelines for backend services, including build, test, static analysis, container image scan, and deployment stages
• Author and maintain unit and integration test suites, and drive the team toward meaningful code coverage and test reliability rather than vanity metrics
• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code in Terraform, review infrastructure changes, and help ensure infrastructure evolves safely alongside application code
• Conduct thorough peer code review, providing specific, actionable feedback against agreed coding standards and architectural patterns
• Supervise…