Lead Software Engineer - Enterprise Email SME, SES. DNS, Java Development

This is a heavy-duty infrastructure and application role for someone who truly understands the nightmares of enterprise-scale email delivery. You aren't just dropping an API call into a basic app; you are building and owning a bulletproof, high-volume messaging pipeline on AWS where a single misconfigured DNS record can tank your entire corporate domain reputation. If you enjoy debugging SPF/DKIM/DMARC records just as much as writing clean Java microservices, this is your playground.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

Your day-to-day will be a hybrid of deep architecture planning, hands-on Spring Boot coding, and firefighting deliverability issues. You'll spend mornings designing asynchronous event-driven pipelines using AWS SES, SNS, and SQS to process millions of transactional and batch emails without dropping a single packet. By afternoon, you might be collaborating with security teams on custom Return-Path domains, setting up dedicated IP pools, or mentoring junior developers on how to properly handle hard bounces and feedback loops before they hurt sender reputation.

The Core Tech Stack

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is the heartbeat here, and you need to know its nuances inside and out—from configuration sets to IP warm-up strategies. Backing that up is a robust Java and Spring Boot ecosystem where you'll build REST APIs and resilient, high-volume queue-processing services. Mastery of DNS architecture (MX, TXT, CNAME, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is non-negotiable, alongside solid experience with AWS serverless or messaging components like S3, SNS, and IAM security.

Interview Expectations

Expect the hiring team to grill you on failure modes. They will likely ask: "If our corporate domain suddenly hits a 5% hard bounce rate on a major mailbox provider and our throughput gets throttled, walk me through your exact remediation playbook." They want to see that you understand reputation monitoring, feedback loops, and dynamic traffic segmentation off the top of your head. Another favorite will be diving into your Java concurrency patterns: "How do you design a resilient, asynchronous retry mechanism in Spring Boot for an out-of-memory or timeout event during a massive batch communication run?" They are looking for architectural foresight and hands-on battle scars.

Application Advice

Forget the generic buzzwords and make sure your resume immediately calls out hard metrics around high-volume messaging and deliverability. If you've managed domains sending millions of emails a month, put those numbers front and center. Explicitly highlight your experience with AWS SES, enterprise DNS authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and enterprise-grade Java/Spring Boot microservices so you easily clear the initial ATS keyword filters.