Lead design and implementation of Java (Spring Boot) microservices/APIs and shared platform components. Drive end-to-end delivery for complex initiatives: architecture, estimation, execution, rollout, and production readiness. Build AI-enabled capabilities (LLM workflows, RAG, evaluation, guardrails, privacy/safety controls) with measurable outcomes. Define and improve non-functional requirements: resiliency, scalability, latency, observability, cost efficiency. Set patterns and standards: code quality, testing strategy, API design, backward compatibility, documentation. Troubleshoot critical production issues; lead root-cause analysis and reliability improvements. Mentor engineers (P2-P3), raise team capability through reviews, pairing, and technical guidance. Collaborate with Product/UX/QA/SRE/Security to deliver secure, compliant solutions. 6-10 years professional software engineering experience with strong Core Java (Java 11+ preferred). Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems and RESTful APIs at scale. Strong Spring ecosystem experience (Spring Boot, testing, dependency injection, build tooling). Strong database skills: SQL, schema design, performance tuning; NoSQL experience is a plus. Cloud experience with AWS or Azure (networking, compute, storage, IAM/security). CI/CD, automated testing, and production operations mindset (on-call/incident response exposure). Kubernetes (EKS/AKS), containers, service mesh concepts. Event-driven architecture (Kafka/SQS/SNS/Event Hubs), idempotency, eventual consistency patterns. Observability with OpenTelemetry and metrics/logs/tracing; SLI/SLO and error-budget thinking. AI/LLM integration experience: Azure OpenAI/OpenAI/Bedrock; vector search, prompt/versioning, evaluation frameworks. Infrastructure as Code: Terraform/CloudFormation/Bicep; security best practices (secrets, OWASP, threat modeling).