AWS Technical Lead

Technical Lead

Must have technical/functional skills:

Minimum 8+ years of software engineering with 5+ years hands-on AWS architecture experience. Expert-level proficiency across core AWS services including EC2, Lambda, ECS/Fargate, RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, S3, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions, VPC, IAM, KMS, and Secrets Manager. Proven ability to design scalable, resilient, cost-optimized cloud-native solutions aligned to AWS Well-Architected Framework. Guides development team on service selection and cloud-native implementation patterns.

Strong hands-on experience designing performance baselines, defining SLAs/SLOs, and executing load testing (JMeter, Gatling, k6). Proficient in building comprehensive observability frameworks covering centralized logging (CloudWatch, ELK, Splunk), custom metrics and dashboards, distributed tracing (AWS X-Ray), and intelligent alerting with escalation policies. Experience with Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, and Prometheus. Ability to design reconciliation monitoring comparing mainframe and cloud outputs during parallel run.

Strong experience in application design, distributed systems, and pattern selection for migration scenarios including event-driven architecture (SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Kafka), serverless design (Lambda, Step Functions), batch processing migration (AWS Batch), microservices decomposition, strangler fig pattern, and anti-corruption layer pattern. Proficient in distributed systems trade-offs including eventual consistency, saga pattern, idempotency design, circuit breaker, and retry patterns.

Must have experience designing and implementing enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline) with automated testing gates, multi-environment promotion strategies, and deployment patterns including blue-green, canary, and feature flags. Strong hands-on Terraform and CloudFormation experience. Experience integrating security scanning (SAST, DAST), performance testing, and automated rollback into pipeline design. Tools include JUnit, Mockito, REST-Assured, JMeter, Postman, SonarQube, GitHub, Maven.

Hands-on experience designing and implementing integration layers connecting legacy/mainframe systems with cloud-native services. Strong proficiency in contract-first REST API design, API Gateway implementation, and asynchronous messaging patterns (SQS, SNS, MQ, Kafka, JMS). Experience with ETL/ELT pipeline design, CDC (Change Data Capture), data validation and reconciliation, and batch job migration from mainframe to cloud equivalents. Ability to design and coordinate parallel run integration between mainframe and cloud systems.

Roles & responsibilities:

• Act as the primary AWS technical authority for the development team — own all cloud architecture decisions within the workstream including service selection, integration patterns, infrastructure design, and coding standards
• Lead and guide a team of developers day-to-day — assign tasks, unblock technical issues, conduct code reviews, and ensure every engineer understands what they are building and why it matters to the migration program
• Design and implement the observability framework for migrated workloads — establish logging standards, build custom CloudWatch dashboards, configure distributed tracing (X-Ray), and define meaningful alerting thresholds with escalation runbooks
• Establish and enforce performance engineering standards — define SLAs/SLOs for each migrated system, design and execute load testing before go-live, optimize AWS service configurations, and validate cloud performance against mainframe benchmarks during parallel run
• Design, implement, and own the CI/CD pipeline for the workstream — including automated testing gates, multi-environment promotion strategy, deployment patterns (blue-green, canary), rollback procedures, and infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation)
• Design and implement integration architecture connecting mainframe and cloud systems — define API contracts, messaging patterns, data pipeline design, and reconciliation monitoring to ensure data parity between legacy and cloud outputs
• Conduct rigorous code reviews for all architectural changes, integration points, and security-sensitive code — enforce standards, flag design deviations, and use reviews as a mentoring opportunity for the development team
• Own the technical quality of sprint deliverables — ensure all code meets acceptance criteria, passes automated tests, and meets performance and security standards before sprint review
• Drive technical spike investigations for complex migration scenarios — assess feasibility, document findings, recommend approach, and share outcomes with the Principal Architect and Program Manager
• Coordinate integration points with other workstream Technical Leads — agree on API contracts, shared data structures, messaging schemas, and cross-team dependencies before development begins
• Actively participate in PI Planning and sprint planning — provide accurate story estimates, flag AWS-specific risks and dependencies, and protect team capacity from unplanned scope
• Maintain technical documentation as a delivery standard AWS architecture decisions, integration specs, monitoring runbooks, deployment guides, and known issues log as part of each sprint's Definition of Done

Salary Range: $100,000 - $140,000 a year

Location: Parsippany, NJ