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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Java Consultant

💰 $ - $

JavaConsultingSoftware EngineeringBackendCloud

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking a seasoned Java Consultant to partner with enterprise clients and internal teams to design, build, and deliver robust Java-based solutions. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise in Java, Spring ecosystem and microservices with strong consulting skills — translating business requirements into scalable, secure, maintainable systems. This role requires hands-on development, architecture guidance, performance tuning, and direct stakeholder engagement to ensure successful delivery of projects in cloud-native and hybrid environments.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Java Developer or Java Engineer
  • Software Engineer / Backend Developer
  • Systems Analyst or Integration Developer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Java Consultant / Principal Consultant
  • Solutions Architect / Technical Architect
  • Engineering Manager / Head of Platform

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer
  • Cloud Engineer / Cloud Architect
  • Technical Product Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end delivery of Java-based solutions, including requirements analysis, architecture design, implementation, testing, deployment and post-release support for enterprise clients.
  • Architect and implement scalable microservices using Spring Boot, Spring Cloud and related frameworks, ensuring services are resilient, observable and easily deployable.
  • Design and develop robust RESTful APIs and gRPC services, define API contracts, versioning strategies, and ensure backward compatibility across releases.
  • Conduct code reviews, enforce coding standards and best practices, and mentor engineering teams to improve code quality, readability and maintainability.
  • Collaborate with product owners and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical designs, user stories and acceptance criteria.
  • Lead performance analysis and JVM tuning efforts for throughput and latency improvements, including heap analysis, GC optimization and thread profiling.
  • Integrate applications with relational and NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra), design efficient schemas and optimize queries for scale.
  • Implement secure authentication and authorization mechanisms (OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT), ensure secure coding practices and address security vulnerabilities in collaboration with security teams.
  • Design and implement CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions or similar tools to automate build, test and deployment workflows.
  • Containerize applications with Docker and build orchestration/deployment strategies for Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), including Helm charts and operators.
  • Drive cloud migration and cloud-native development efforts on AWS, Azure or GCP — leveraging managed services, serverless patterns and cloud storage offerings.
  • Integrate asynchronous processing and event-driven architectures using Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS to ensure decoupled, reliable systems.
  • Apply test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) practices with JUnit, Mockito, AssertJ, Cucumber and integration testing frameworks.
  • Create and maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, runbooks and operational playbooks to support knowledge transfer and operations.
  • Troubleshoot production incidents and lead post-mortem analyses to identify root causes, remediate defects and implement preventative measures.
  • Optimize application startup, deployment times and resource consumption to reduce infrastructure costs and improve developer velocity.
  • Partner with QA and DevOps teams to define release strategies, blue/green or canary deployments and rollback procedures.
  • Drive adoption of modern Java features (Java 11/17+), modularization, and migration strategies from legacy Java EE/Monolithic applications to modern stacks.
  • Conduct technology evaluations and proof-of-concepts for new frameworks, libraries and cloud services to inform platform roadmap and technical debt reduction.
  • Provide hands-on consulting, perform client workshops, deliver technical presentations and assist clients in defining project success metrics and KPIs.
  • Estimate effort and prepare delivery plans, risk registers and mitigation strategies for complex Java projects while ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery.
  • Mentor junior consultants and developers, lead training sessions on Java best practices, microservices patterns and cloud-native design.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams (UX, product, data, security, infra) to ensure solutions align with enterprise architecture, compliance and operational standards.
  • Manage stakeholder expectations, provide regular status reports and ensure alignment between technical direction and business objectives.

Secondary Functions

  • Assist with pre-sales activities: technical scoping, solution demos, and RFP responses to support new business acquisition.
  • Support client adoption of observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK) for metrics, logging and distributed tracing.
  • Contribute to platform governance by defining shared libraries, templates and best-practice patterns to accelerate delivery across client teams.
  • Participate in agile ceremonies, sprint planning and backlog refinement to help deliver incremental business value.
  • Assist clients in establishing engineering maturity, CI/CD hygiene, security controls and release management best practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Java (Java 8/11/17+) — deep expertise in language features, concurrency, memory model and JVM internals.
  • Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data, Spring Security) for building enterprise applications.
  • Microservices architecture design patterns, service discovery, circuit breakers, distributed configuration and API gateways.
  • RESTful API design, OpenAPI/Swagger, gRPC and API contract management.
  • Relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and ORM tools (Hibernate/JPA), plus experience with NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra).
  • Containerization (Docker), orchestration with Kubernetes and deployment automation (Helm, Kustomize).
  • Cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud — experience with core services (EC2/EKS, S3, RDS, IAM).
  • CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tooling: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or Tekton.
  • Build and dependency management: Maven and Gradle.
  • Automated testing frameworks: JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers, integration testing strategies.
  • Messaging and streaming platforms: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS/SNS, or ActiveMQ.
  • Observability and monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, Jaeger/OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing.
  • Source control and collaboration: Git, branching strategies and code review workflows.
  • Performance tuning, profiling tools (VisualVM, YourKit) and load testing (JMeter, Gatling).
  • Security best practices: OAuth2, JWT, SAML, secure coding, dependency scanning and vulnerability remediation.

Soft Skills

  • Client-facing communication: clear, confident verbal and written communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Consulting mindset: ability to drive discussions, influence decisions and present pragmatic solutions that balance business and technical constraints.
  • Problem solving and analytical thinking: diagnose complex systems, identify root causes and propose actionable remediation.
  • Leadership and mentorship: coach junior developers, lead technical design sessions and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Time management and prioritization: manage multiple client engagements and deadlines effectively.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: work cross-functionally with product, QA, security and operations teams.
  • Adaptability and learning agility: rapidly learn new technologies, frameworks and client domains.
  • Documentation and knowledge transfer: produce clear runbooks, design docs and training materials.
  • Stakeholder management: set expectations, mitigate risks and escalate appropriately to ensure delivery success.
  • Business acumen: understand client KPIs, cost drivers and how technical choices impact business outcomes.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
  • Professional certifications such as Oracle Certified Professional (Java), AWS Certified Developer / Solutions Architect, or Certified ScrumMaster.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Systems Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 4 - 10 years of professional software development experience, with at least 3+ years delivering Java-based enterprise applications.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of hands-on Java and Spring development and 2+ years in a client-facing consulting or solution architecture role.
  • Demonstrated experience migrating monoliths to microservices, deploying applications to cloud environments and operating within CI/CD-driven organizations.
  • Proven track record of delivering projects end-to-end, mentoring teams and producing measurable improvements in performance, reliability or developer productivity.
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