Lead Software Engineering (Kafka Sme)

Location: Chicago, IL Salary: $150,000.00 USD Annually - $185,000.00 USD Annually Description: Lead, Software Engineer (Streaming Development) If you east, sleep and breathe distributed computing (Java) and Kafka Streams and if you've ever architected cloud-native solutions then you will want to read about the opportunity below. We’re talking about a full-time, permanent (hybrid onsite) gig in downtown Chicago. Not some corporate hamster wheel — this is a place where you’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the sharpest engineering minds in the city. You’ll help shape the backbone of a data-driven enterprise, building scalable, cloud-first systems that hum at high velocity. What You’ll Actually Do Architect and build secure, scalable, and resilient cloud-native systems that don’t fall over when the traffic spikes. Dive deep into requirements, poke holes in assumptions, and write code that’s clean, tested, and battle-ready. Lead code reviews that aren’t just rubber stamps — you’ll mentor, challenge, and elevate your team. Write unit and integration tests that catch bugs before they become production nightmares. Be the voice of reason when it comes to risk, performance, and system design. Collaborate like a pro — with devs, architects, product owners — to drive the data-first strategy across the org. What You Bring to the Table 7+ years of hands-on Java engineering — not just writing code, but crafting systems. 5+ years building high-speed, data-centric solutions that scale like a beast. Deep experience with distributed computing frameworks: Kafka Streams, FLINK, Spark — you know the drill. You’ve wrangled message brokers like Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, or Kinesis — and lived to tell the tale. You speak fluent AWS: VPCs, EC2, RDS, IAM, KMS, security groups — you’ve built in the cloud and know how to keep it secure. You write tests like you mean it — JUnit, Citrus, whatever gets the job done. Git workflows? You’ve mastered them. DevOps tools like Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, Kubernetes? You’ve deployed, scaled, and debugged with them. You’ve got eyes on your systems — Splunk, ElasticSearch, Prometheus, AppDynamics — you monitor like a hawk. You’ve got the paper (BS in Computer Science or similar), but more importantly, you’ve got the scars and stories from the trenches. By providing your phone number, you consent to: (1) receive automated text messages and calls from the Judge Group, Inc. and its affiliates (collectively "Judge") to such phone number regarding job opportunities, your job application, and for other related purposes. Message & data rates apply and message frequency may vary. Consistent with Judge's Privacy Policy, information obtained from your consent will not be shared with third parties for marketing/promotional purposes. Reply STOP to opt out of receiving telephone calls and text messages from Judge and HELP for help. Contact: kkerr@judge.com This job and many more are available through The Judge Group. Find us on the web at www.judge.com