We are seeking a highly experienced and technically accomplished Application Dev Lead to join our team, responsible for architecting, developing, and leading our core banking integration strategies and up-to-date microservices ecosystem. The ideal candidate will be a subject matter expert in integration technologies, possess deep, hands-on expertise in Java Microservices and enterprise Database engineering (Oracle/SQL), have extensive knowledge of the financial services domain, and demonstrate a proven track record of leading technical teams to deliver robust, scalable, and secure solutions.
This role requires a unique blend of hands-on technical excellence, architectural vision, database performance optimization, and strong people management skills to drive the modernization and stability of our mission-critical banking systems.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership &
- People Management
- Team Leadership &
- Mentorship: Lead, manage, and mentor a high-performing team of developers, backend engineers, and integration specialists, fostering technical capability, career growth, and engineering excellence across Java microservices and middleware platforms.
- Project &
- Delivery Ownership: Take full ownership of technical delivery across complex integration initiatives, including architectural scoping, task breakdown (WBS), accurate sprint estimation, resource planning, and milestone prioritization.
- Quality Assurance &
- Engineering Governance: Enforce best-in-class engineering practices by conducting rigorous code reviews, pull request audits, and comprehensive architectural design reviews (TDRs).
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Collaborate seamlessly across business lines, enterprise architecture, database administrators, infrastructure, Information Security, and third-party vendor teams to align technical delivery with strategic business goals.
- SME &
- Agile Delivery: Act as the primary Subject Matter Expert (SME) for complex escalations, production incident triage (Sev-1/MIM), and root-cause analysis, while driving Agile/Scrum ceremonies to ensure predictable, high-quality, and timely delivery.
Technical &
- Domain Responsibilities
- Java Microservices Architecture: Architect, build, and deploy production-grade, containerized Java microservices using Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and RESTful/gRPC APIs, implementing distributed resilience patterns (Saga orchestrations, Circuit Breakers, Bulkheads, Outbox pattern).
- Database Engineering &
- Query Performance: Design robust database models and persistence layers (Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, JDBC), execute query tuning, analyze execution plans (EXPLAIN PLAN), optimize indexing strategies (B-Tree, Bitmap, composite), and resolve connection pool (HikariCP) and row-level locking contentions in enterprise Oracle/SQL environments.
- High-Availability Integration Design: Design and implement resilient, distributed integration solutions prioritizing active-active high availability (HA), fault tolerance, multi-region disaster recovery (DR), recoverability, and minimal business disruption.
- Legacy-to-Cloud Modernization: Lead the architectural evolution and phased decomposition of legacy centralized middleware (TIBCO BusinessWorks, IBM MQ) into distributed,
event-driven architectures utilizing Apache Kafka and cloud-native Java microservices.
- Banking Domain Systems Integration: Apply deep expertise in banking and financial services to integration architecture, specifically in real-time fraud detection, payment processing rails (ISO 20022, SWIFT, Fedwire, ACH), clearing and settlement, and core enterprise banking ledgers.
- Security, Audit &
- Regulatory Compliance: Ensure all integration services strictly comply with enterprise security baselines, audit controls, regulatory mandates (OCC, Fed, PRA, MAS), data protection rules (PII, PCI-DSS), Mutual TLS (mTLS) certificate management, and operational resilience standards.
- High-Volume Real-Time Messaging: Oversee the architecture, throughput tuning, and management of real-time transaction flows, high-volume messaging pipelines, dead-letter queue (DLQ) automation, and sub-second SLA routing.
Recommended Qualifications
Core Technical Skills
- Java &
- Microservices:
- Advanced proficiency in Core Java (Java 11/17/21), Multithreading, Concurrency, and JVM tuning (Memory management, Garbage Collection - G1GC/ZGC).
- Hands-on mastery of Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Batch).
- Deep experience with Microservices patterns (Saga Orchestration/Choreography, CQRS, Circuit Breaker via Resilience4j, API Gateway routing).
- Containerization and orchestration experience using Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift.
- Database &
- Data Persistence:
- Advanced expertise in Relational Databases: Oracle (19c ), SQL, PL/SQL, stored procedures, functions, packages, and triggers.
- Deep knowledge of Query Performance Tuning, Execution Plan analysis (EXPLAIN PLAN), index design, partitioning, and stats gathering.
- Mastery of connection pool management (HikariCP), lock contention mitigation, deadlock resolution, and transaction isolation levels (READ COMMITTED, SERIALIZABLE).
- Solid understanding of ORM frameworks (Hibernate, JPA) and mitigation of ORM antipatterns (N 1 queries, dirty checks).
- Enterprise Middleware &
- Messaging:
- Subject Matter Expertise in TIBCO technologies: TIBCO BusinessWorks (BW 5.x / 6.x), TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), TIBCO Administrator/TEA.
- In-depth experience with enterprise queuing and streaming: IBM MQ and Apache Kafka (Topic design, Partitioning, Consumer Groups, Schema Registry).
- APIs &
- Protocols:
- Contract-first API development: RESTful Web Services, OpenAPI/Swagger, SOAP Web Services, gRPC.
- Data formatting & transformation: JSON, XML, XSD, WSDL, XPath, XSLT, and Canonical Data Modeling.
- Security &
- Cryptography:
- Solid foundation in transport and application security: SSL/TLS 1.3, Mutual TLS (mTLS), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Keystores/Truststores, OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, and API Key/Token management.
- DevOps, CI/CD &
- Observability:
- Build &
- CI/CD toolchains: Git, Maven, Gradle, Harness, TeamCity, Jenkins,
uDeploy.
- Comprehensive monitoring & logging: Splunk, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, Micrometer, and distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry/Zipkin).
Good To Have Skills
- Automated Testing &
- Quality Engineering:
- Experience with Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).
- Familiarity with unit and integration testing frameworks such as JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers, and Spring Boot Test.
- Experience with API contract testing tools (Pact, Spring Cloud Contract) and performance/load testing tools (JMeter, Gatling).
- Knowledge of automated code quality gates and static analysis tools (SonarQube, Checkstyle).
Banking Domain Expertise
- Deep expertise in banking and financial services integration architecture and enterprise application patterns.
- Proven experience with real-time fraud detection pipelines, payment processing rails (ISO 20022, SWIFT MT/MX, Fedwire, NACHA/ACH, RTP), core ledger accounting, and trade/transaction processing systems.
- In-depth knowledge of real-time transactional flows, straight-through processing (STP), guaranteed exactly-once delivery, idempotency key patterns, and high-volume messaging resilience.
- Hands-on familiarity with global banking regulations, audit readiness, operational resilience standards, and data protection frameworks (GLBA, GDPR, PCI-DSS).
Leadership &
- Management
- Demonstrated experience leading, mentoring, and managing technical teams of developers, backend engineers, and integration architects.
- Proven ability to manage full end-to-end technical delivery, including architectural roadmapping, scope definition, backlog grooming, estimation, and task prioritization.
- Track record of establishing engineering best practices, leading code reviews, reducing technical debt, and elevating team capabilities in modern technologies.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, technical communication, and presentation skills across technical teams and executive business sponsors.
- Strong proficiency in driving agile project delivery using Scrum/Kanban methodologies, sprint planning, and release governance.
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Job Family Group
Technology
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Job Family
Applications Development
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Time Type
Full time
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Most Relevant Skills
Please see the requirements listed above.
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Other Relevant Skills For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.
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📌 Lead Developer - Java and Microservices (Chennai)
🏢 Citi
📍 Chennai