Java Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer | Contract | Java / AWS / Kafka

Hands-on senior engineering role on a major payments modernisation — legacy platform out, event-driven microservices on AWS in. Real engineering complexity, modern tooling, and a genuine AI-first delivery culture.

You'll be designing and shipping production microservices, leading legacy decomposition using DDD and strangler patterns, and working closely with architecture, data science, and AI platform teams. There's also a coaching element — helping less experienced engineers work effectively with AI tooling and copilots.

Day to day:

• Architecting and building cloud-native, event-driven payment services
• Legacy modernisation — decomposition, DDD, AI-accelerated refactoring
• Instrumenting systems so AI copilots and autonomous runbooks can operate safely
• CI/CD, IaC, observability, chaos/resilience practices
• Mentoring engineers on AI-first ways of working

What they're looking for:

• Strong Java — expert level, not just competent
• AWS (or comparable), Kubernetes, containerised services
• Kafka / event-driven architecture at scale
• CI/CD, DevOps/SRE practices
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tools (Copilot etc.) or building LLM-enabled services
• Experience delivering in complex, regulated environments

This is a role for someone who can balance transformation ambition with real delivery — pragmatic engineering decisions, not just greenfield enthusiasm.

Drop me a message if it fi