Senior Java/Python SRE - McLean, VA

Job Title: Senior Java SRE - McLean, VA

Assignment Duration: 12+ Months

Engagement Type: Contract

Work Location: McLean, VA - Onsite (Hybrid/Initial Remote options depending on end-client)

Certifications Required

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or AWS DevOps Engineer –Professional
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)

Required Technical Expertise

• Java (JVM internals, GC tuning, microservices)
• AWS Cloud (EKS, EC2, IAM, VPC, RDS, CloudWatch)
• Kubernetes (CKA/CKS-level depth)
• Docker, Terraform
• CI/CD: GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
• Streaming: Kafka, KSQLDB, Spark Streaming
• Service Mesh: Istio, Anthos Service Mesh
• Monitoring: Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, Kiali
• OS & Scripting: Linux/Unix, Bash
• Programming: Python or Go
• Virtualization: VMware
• Networking & Performance: Nginx Controller, Seesaw, eBPF
• Experience supporting core banking, payment gateways, or trading platforms
• Exposure to high-frequency transaction systems
• Knowledge of regulatory audits and compliance controls
• Experience with zero-downtime deployments and disaster recovery strategies

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate highly available, fault-tolerant systems supporting core banking, payments, and trading platforms.
• Lead SRE practices including SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and reliability-driven engineering decisions.
• Provide L3/L4 incident response, root cause analysis (RCA), and post-incident remediation for production systems.
• Support and optimize Java-based microservices running on Kubernetes (EKS).
• Implement and manage AWS-native services (EC2, EKS, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, CloudWatch).
• Develop automation using Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and policy enforcement.
• Manage Kubernetes networking, storage, and service mesh integrations including Istio / Anthos Service Mesh.
• Implement advanced Kubernetes storage solutions using Portworx.
• Architect and maintain enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, and cloud-native tooling.
• Automate manual operational tasks using Python, Go, Bash, and infrastructure-as-code patterns.
• Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting using Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, Kiali, and custom dashboards.
• Utilize eBPF for deep kernel-level observability and performance tuning.
• Support real-time data platforms using Kafka, KSQLDB, Kafka Streams, Spark Streaming.
• Manage multi-cluster Kubernetes environments, including cluster federation.
• Optimize system performance, scalability, and latency under high transaction volumes.
• Enforce banking-grade security controls, IAM policies, secrets management, and least-privilege access.
• Support environments aligned with SOC2, PCI-DSS, SOX, and internal banking security standards.
• Provide 24×7 operational support, including rotational shifts, weekends, and on-call coverage across all U.S. time zones.