IT Software Engineer 5 - Technical Lead (114401-1)

The role combines hands-on cloud/software expertise with technical leadership, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration, providing significant impact across complex enterprise technology initiatives. This senior technical leadership role will provide technical direction and delivery ownership for a team of software engineers developing and operating scalable, cloud-native applications on AWS.

Cullerton Group has a new opportunity for an IT Software Engineer 5 – Technical Lead. This is a 12-month, full-time remote position, with candidates required to be local to the Chicago area due to travel/onsite needs when requested. Compensation is $104/hr W-2 plus full benefits include vision, dental, health insurance, 401(k), and holiday pay.

Job Summary
This senior technical leadership role will provide technical direction and delivery ownership for a team of software engineers developing and operating scalable, cloud-native applications on AWS. The position will drive architecture and engineering decisions across Java/Spring Boot microservices, OpenSearch, AWS infrastructure, CI/CD, and observability. The engineer will partner closely with product, architecture, and platform teams to build secure, resilient, high-performing solutions while mentoring engineers and improving development practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead software engineers in delivering business-critical cloud-native applications and establish technical and architectural standards.
• Drive AWS cloud adoption, modernization initiatives, and architecture decisions across Java/Spring Boot microservices and distributed systems.
• Ensure solutions meet scalability, performance, security, reliability, and operational requirements.
• Promote DevOps, CI/CD, automation, observability, and AI-assisted software development practices.
• Mentor engineers and collaborate with Product Owners, Architects, platform teams, and other stakeholders to align technical solutions with business objectives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• 10+ years of relevant experience, including 5+ years in a technical lead role.
• Strong hands-on experience with Java, Spring Boot, microservices, and REST APIs.
• Strong AWS experience, including ECS/Fargate, IAM, ALB, RDS, CloudWatch, and Secrets Manager.
• Experience with OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Docker, CI/CD, GitHub, distributed systems, cloud architecture, observability, DevOps, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases, event-driven architecture, API integration, performance optimization, and AI-assisted development tools.
• Strong technical leadership, communication, stakeholder management, mentoring/coaching, problem-solving, critical thinking, decision-making, collaboration, and cross-functional influencing skills.
• Must currently be local to the Chicago area, even though the position can initially be performed 100% remotely, because onsite/travel needs may arise.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with the latest versions of Java.
• Extensive experience designing and operating complex, scalable AWS cloud-native applications.
• Demonstrated experience establishing architecture standards and mentoring software engineering teams.
• Experience introducing or promoting AI-assisted development practices within engineering teams.

Why This Role?
This position offers the opportunity to take technical ownership of business-critical cloud applications while influencing architecture, engineering standards, and modernization initiatives. The role combines hands-on cloud/software expertise with technical leadership, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration, providing significant impact across complex enterprise technology initiatives.