Principal Java & GCP Solution Architect

Location: MI - Detroit () |
Employment Type: Full Time - 40 hours per week |
Job Level: T6 |
Work Preference: Hybrid |
Job Code: 244247

Job Description:

Principal Java and GCP Solution Architect who can bring both deep technical expertise and thought leadership to complex client engagements. This role requires a hands-on architect who can design modern Java microservices, shape cloud-native strategy on GCP, guide engineering teams, and serve as a trusted technical voice with senior client stakeholders. This is not a documentation-only architecture position—the successful candidate must remain close to implementation and be able to turn architectural direction into practical delivery outcomes.

Join our growing Detroit-area team in a strategic Principal Java & GCP Solution Architect role. You'll work a hybrid / onsite /remote combinwhile remaining available for onsite collaboration as needed with clients, delivery teams, and technical leadership across the local Michigan area. What You Will Do

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of modern Java-based applications using cloud-native and microservices patterns.
• Translate business requirements into practical architectural blueprints aligned with enterprise standards and long-term strategy.
• Provide technical thought leadership across ongoing and future client engagements.
• Assess existing application landscapes and recommend modernization, migration, and optimization strategies.
• Design secure, scalable, resilient, observable, and high-performing distributed systems.
• Define application, integration, API, data, deployment, and operational architecture.
• Establish API-first strategies using REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and event-driven patterns.
• Design asynchronous and event-driven solutions using technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Guide engineering teams in the use of Java 11+, Spring Boot, microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native design patterns.
• Lead architecture reviews, technical assessments, proofs of concept, and technology evaluations.
• Establish reusable architecture standards, reference patterns, engineering guidelines, and technical governance.
• Collaborate with developers, Dev Ops engineers, QA teams, security teams, product leaders, and business stakeholders.
• Provide technical guidance throughout design, development, testing, deployment, and production support.
• Guide containerization and orchestration strategies using Docker and Kubernetes, preferably Google Kubernetes Engine.
• Define CI/CD, Git Ops, and infrastructure-as-code approaches using tools such as Jenkins, ArgoCD, Git, and Terraform.
• Design observability frameworks covering logs, metrics, traces, alerts, dashboards, and production diagnostics.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and determine where they can provide practical business and engineering value.
• Mentor senior developers, technical leads, and architects.
• Present architecture recommendations, trade-offs, risks, and decisions to senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, architectural gaps, and remediation strategies.
• Ensure architectural decisions support maintainability, security, performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.

Required Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing and delivering enterprise Java applications.
• Deep expertise in Java 11 or later and Spring Boot.
• Proven experience architecting microservices and distributed systems.
• Strong production-level architecture experience with Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience designing and deploying applications using GCP cloud-native services.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Google Kubernetes Engine or comparable enterprise Kubernetes platforms.
• Strong understanding of RESTful APIs and API-first architecture.
• Experience with one or more additional integration patterns or technologies:
  • GraphQL
  • gRPC
  • Event-driven architecture
  • Asynchronous messaging
• Experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, or comparable messaging technologies.
• Strong knowledge of scalability, resilience, fault tolerance, performance, security, and observability.
• Experience with SQL and No
  
  SQL databases, including distributed-system data…