Lead C#​/.NET Engineer - Hybrid Hamilton, NJ

Our direct client is looking for a Lead C#/.NET Engineer for a Hybrid(3 days/week) Long Term Contract in Hamilton, NJ

Will start 100% on site for 30 days & move to hybrid 3 days onsite 2 days remote

• Lead/Principal C#/.NET Engineer with expert-level Entity Framework Core experience to lead the modernization of a mission-critical legacy benefits system hosted on AWS Cloud.
• We are modernizing a large, mission-critical Honeywell Bull mainframe benefits system (FAMIS) converting ~1.5M lines of COBOL and ~160K lines of JCL to C#/.NET, migrating an IDS-II hierarchical database to PostgreSQL, and deploying on AWS. Converted code is delivered by an automated modernization vendor in an as-is state.
• This Lead/Principal role owns the refactoring of that converted code into clean, maintainable, high-performance, production-grade C#/.NET, defines the data-access architecture using Entity Framework Core against PostgreSQL, sets engineering standards for the team, and safeguards functional equivalence to the legacy system.
• This is a benefits system serving NJ families correctness, performance within the nightly batch window, and maintainability are paramount.

• Refactor machine-converted, COBOL-derived C# into idiomatic, maintainable .NET meaningful naming, proper OO/domain design, separation of concerns, dependency injection
• Work in .NET (Core) / .NET (latest version); apply modern C# language features (LINQ, async/await, records, pattern matching, nullable reference types, generics)
• Design and implement service layers, domain models, and APIs (ASP.NET Core Web API) that back the Angular UI
• Refactor legacy batch/procedural logic (converted from COBOL/JCL) into maintainable, testable .NET; handle exact decimal/financial arithmetic (decimal, rounding rules) to preserve benefit-calculation correctness
• Optimize performance to meet the nightly batch window (profiling, memory management, async I/O, parallelism where safe)

• Own the data-access architecture using Entity Framework Core against PostgreSQL (Npgsql provider)
• Refactor the auto-generated/converted data-access layer into a clean, performant EF Core model
• Design entity models, DbContext configuration, Fluent API mappings, relationships, keys, and indexes reflecting the IDS-II ? PostgreSQL schema (168 tables, 4,024+ fields)
• Optimize EF Core queries (eager/lazy/explicit loading, projection, As No Tracking , compiled queries, batching) to avoid N+1 and meet performance SLAs on high-volume batch operations
• Manage EF Core migrations, concurrency handling, transactions, and connection resiliency
• Map legacy data types and semantics correctly (packed decimals, fixed-width, EBCDIC-origin data, condition codes) to PostgreSQL/EF types without behavioral drift
• Contribute to the COBOL-field ? PostgreSQL-column ? business-term data dictionary

• Define and enforce C#/.NET coding standards, architecture patterns, and refactoring guidelines for the engineering team
• Serve as senior technical authority on the converted codebase; make cross-cutting design decisions
• Mentor mid/junior C# developers; perform code reviews; drive engineering quality
• Partner with the Technical Manager/Architect on target architecture and the refactoring strategy

• Ensure functional equivalence: build unit and regression tests (xUnit/NUnit, Moq) to validate refactored code against the legacy baseline; fix FET-surfaced defects
• Integrate with CI/CD (AWS Code Build/Code Pipeline), enforce quality/security gates (Sonar Qube, static analysis, secure coding/OWASP)
• Collaborate with FAMIS SMEs to preserve business logic (eligibility, benefit calculation, payments, EBT)
• Deliver incrementally within Scrum; document design and decisions

• 12-15 years of professional C#/.NET software engineering, including senior/lead responsibilities
• Deep expertise in C# and the .NET platform (.NET Framework and .NET Core / .NET 6/8+), including async programming, memory/performance optimization, and modern language features
• Expert-level Entity Framework / EF Core: entity modeling, Fluent API, migrations, query optimization, transactions, concurrency, provider-specific behavior
• Strong relational database skills;
  PostgreSQL strongly preferred (Oracle/SQL Server acceptable) schema design, indexing, query tuning, stored procedures
• ASP.NET Core Web API design (REST) for front-end integration
• Solid software design: SOLID, design…