Job Description & Details
This is a heavy-hitting Principal Software Engineer contract where you will simultaneously architect distributed microservices and mentor a mid-sized engineering team. You aren't just writing code here; you're setting the technical roadmap, dealing with high-throughput MS SQL workloads, and driving the adoption of modern practices like Kafka streaming.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
You'll spend your days bouncing between high-level architectural decisions and hands-on coding, designing resilient Java and Spring Boot microservices while optimizing MS SQL schemas. A significant chunk of your time will go toward leading event-driven data pipelines with Kafka, reviewing pull requests, and unblocking your team of 4 to 8 engineers through direct mentorship and 1:1s.
The Core Tech Stack
You need absolute fluency in Java (11+) and the Spring ecosystem, alongside rock-solid relational database tuning with MS SQL. Kafka is a non-negotiable requirement for their event-driven architecture, and you'll need enough React context to guide front-end integrations. Hands-on familiarity with Claude and cloud-native tools like Docker and Kubernetes will make your day-to-day significantly smoother here.
Interview Expectations
Expect the interview panel to grill you on distributed systems failure modes, specifically asking how you would handle consumer lag and offset management in a high-throughput Kafka pipeline. They are looking to see if you can balance pragmatic delivery speed with rock-solid architectural resilience. You'll also face scenario-based leadership questions assessing how you handle severe technical disagreements and mentor underperforming engineers without micro-managing them.
Application Advice
Make sure your resume doesn't just list technologies, but explicitly highlights the scale of the microservices you've architected and the team sizes you've mentored. Mirror the exact terminology from the job description—such as 'MS SQL optimization', 'event-streaming pipelines', and 'Spring Boot microservices'—to easily clear the initial ATS filters before a senior technical recruiter reviews your profile.