Lead Developer - Java and Microservices at Citi · Chennai

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 modern 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

Job Family:

Applications Development

Time Type:

Full time

Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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