Principal Java Developer (SC Cleared)

Job Title: Principal Java Developer (SC Cleared)

Location: Remote (with ad-hoc travel to London office)

Contract Length: 12 Months (with scope to extend)

Start Date: ASAP

IR35: Inside

Interview Process: 1 Stage, MS Teams

Clearance: SC

We are supporting a public sector client in hiring a Principal Java Developer to lead the technical delivery of large-scale, cloud-native systems on AWS within a secure, regulated government environment.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role requiring strong expertise in distributed and event-driven architectures, and in the design, build, test and operation of resilient microservices-based solutions. The successful candidate will act as the technical authority within their domain, setting technical direction across multiple teams, providing technical governance and supporting architectural decisions, incident management and live service operations.

This role suits a technically strong and confident Principal Developer with significant modern Java development experience at scale, comfortable providing technical leadership across multiple teams and communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Carry out challenging implementation tasks while maintaining strong stakeholder engagement and keeping relevant documentation up to date
• Deliver new designs and implementations, working closely with architects, security specialists and other stakeholders
• Pioneer new software architecture and build or integration approaches, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy
• Implement effective testing and quality assurance practices across multiple individuals and systems
• Act as the technical authority for the domain, arbitrating complex technical decisions and ensuring standards are maintained
• Set technical direction across multiple teams and support production support, incident management and live service operations

Essential Skills

• Significant modern Java development experience (Spring Boot, Maven, Docker Compose, REST/SOAP) on complex systems operating at scale, handling hundreds of millions of transactions annually
• Experience with AWS distributed and asynchronous systems, including S3, SQS, SNS, Step Functions, EventBridge and event sourcing, plus containerised applications using Docker and Kubernetes
• Experience creating resilient and observable systems
• Experience leading multiple teams, including technical governance and architectural input
• Experience of production support, incident management and live service operations

Desirable Skills

• Additional languages and frameworks, such as Python, Bash, Node.js and TypeScript
• Build and local development experience using LocalStack
• Experience with AWS AppConfig, API Gateway and Lambda Authorizer
• Infrastructure and deployment experience using Terraform and Helm
• Experience with secrets management, authorisation, authentication and certificate management
• Integration and messaging experience using Kafka/AWS MSK, REST and SOAP