Lead Software Engineer; FE​/BE​/AWS​/Big Data

Overview

Software Guidance & Assistance, Inc., (SGA), is searching for a Lead Software Engineer (Java/AWS/Big Data) for a CONTRACT assignment with one of our premier Regulatory clients in Rockville, MD or Tysons, VA. Hybrid - 3x a week on-site.

The client's Surveillance Platform and Analytics team is seeking an exceptional Lead Software Engineer with strong technical leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset to guide the design and development of innovative full-stack solutions. This role combines hands-on technical contribution with team leadership, architectural guidance, and strategic technical direction for business-critical surveillance systems that protect market integrity. The ideal candidate balances technical depth with leadership breadth, mentors engineers, drives architectural decisions, and leverages cutting-edge technologies including AI to enhance both team productivity and product capabilities.

This role provides clear progression to Staff/Principal Engineer positions.

• Technical Leadership:
  Lead the design and architecture of complex, distributed systems based on business needs; define technical direction, evaluate new technologies, and drive adoption of best practices
• Team Mentorship:
  Guide and mentor senior and mid-level engineers, fostering their technical growth through code reviews, technical guidance, and career development
• Full-Stack Development:
  Design and build critical enterprise applications leveraging Java, JavaScript/Angular, Spring Boot, REST/Web Services, and big-data technologies
• Cloud-Native Architecture:
  Architect and implement highly scalable, resilient solutions on AWS leveraging serverless and container technologies (Lambda, ECS, S3, RDS, EMR)
• Agile
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Partner closely with architects, principal engineers, product owners, and management to align technical execution with business objectives and translate requirements into robust solutions
• Distributed Systems Expertise:
  Lead initiatives involving microservices, event-driven architectures, and big-data technologies across the team
• AI Integration Leadership:
  Drive initiatives to leverage AI technologies (generative AI, LLMs, AWS AI services) for both developer productivity and product innovation
• Dev Ops Excellence:
  Champion CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, and observability practices across the team
• Innovation & Strategy:
  Drive POCs, evaluate emerging technologies, and lead adoption of innovations that provide competitive advantage
• Cross-Team Influence:
  Collaborate with other teams and leaders to share knowledge, establish engineering standards, and drive organization-wide technical initiatives
• Ownership & Quality:
  Set the standard for code quality, tackle the most complex technical challenges, and demonstrate strong ownership and self-starter mentality

• Education:
  
  Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or other relevant Engineering discipline (Master’s preferred)
• Leadership
  
  Experience:
  
  10+ years in software engineering with 3+ years in technical leadership or lead engineer roles demonstrating team mentorship and architectural decision-making
• AI
  
  Experience:
  
  Proven experience leading AI integration initiatives and leveraging AI technologies to drive developer productivity and incorporate AI capabilities into software solutions
• Software Engineering: 10+ years of experience building full-stack software using Java, JavaScript, REST/Web Services, Angular, and Spring Boot
• Cloud Expertise: 7+ years of experience architecting and building solutions on AWS Cloud (ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3, EMR, etc.)
• Big Data: 5+ years of experience working with big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Presto, or AWS EMR
• Database
  
  Skills:
  
  5+ years of experience designing schemas, writing complex SQL queries, and optimizing database performance
• Scripting:
  Strong proficiency in Unix shell, Python, Perl, Groovy, or similar scripting languages
• Communication:
  Strong technical communication skills including documentation, presentations, and stakeholder management

• Extensive experience designing and architecting enterprise-scale systems with complex business requirements
• Deep understanding of AWS Well-Architected Framework with ability to conduct architecture reviews
• Experience architecting and leading AI/ML initiatives including production GenAI applications; familiarity with MLOps practices, Lang Chain, vector databases, or RAG architectures
• Expert-level experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines at scale and Dev Ops practices
• Production experience with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS) and container security
• Advanced experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Cloud Formation, CDK)
• Strong background in monitoring, observability, and SRE practices (Cloud Watch, Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana)
• Expert knowledge of microservices, event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, SNS), and distributed systems patterns
• Deep understanding of secure coding…