Senior Java Developer – Cloud, Microservices & AI (Contract)

About the role

We are looking for a Senior Java Developer to join a leading banking and payments technology firm on a contract basis. You will combine deep engineering expertise with AI‑assisted delivery to create next‑generation, event‑driven, cloud‑native payment services.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship high‑quality microservices and event‑driven capabilities that power modern payment experiences.
• Partner with architecture, product, data‑science and AI platform teams to embed machine‑learning and AI‑assisted workflows into customer and operational journeys.
• Lead the decomposition and modernization of legacy components using domain‑driven design, strangler patterns, and AI‑accelerated refactoring techniques.
• Curate, instrument, and document systems so AI copilots and autonomous runbooks can safely observe, learn, and act (telemetry, feature flags, guardrails).
• Drive engineering excellence through design reviews, automated testing, chaos/resilience practices, and codified reliability standards.
• Improve developer experience with automated pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code, policy‑as‑code, and AI‑enabled tooling that shortens feedback loops.
• Coach and mentor engineers on AI‑first ways of working, including prompt literacy, pair‑programming with copilots, and responsible‑use guidelines.
• Balance transformation ambition with delivery commitments by making pragmatic, data‑informed trade‑offs and communicating risks early.

Required profile

• Proven experience delivering software in complex, distributed, highly regulated environments.
• Expert‑level Java skills with fluency in modern frameworks, testing libraries and build tooling.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS (or comparable cloud) and building cloud‑native, containerised services on Kubernetes.
• Working knowledge of event‑driven architectures and streaming platforms such as Kafka; able to model, test and operate event flows at scale.
• Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure automation, observability stacks, and Site Reliability/DevOps practices.
• Demonstrated use of AI‑assisted engineering tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) or building ML/LLM‑enabled services, with a focus on responsible AI.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence cross‑functional partners and navigate enterprise governance.

Required skills

• Java
• Spring (or similar Java framework)
• AWS
• Kubernetes
• Kafka
• CI/CD pipelines
• Observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana)
• Site Reliability Engineering / DevOps practices
• GitHub Copilot or other AI‑assisted coding tools