Senior Software Engineer – Domain Services

American Electric Power•Columbus, OH

4d•$116,255 - $151,133•Onsite

About The Position

This role is responsible for engineering and operating the enterprise Kafka platform, which is a strategic, on‑prem data movement backbone. The focus is on platform stability, scalability, data safety, and enablement of producer/consumer teams. We are seeking hands-on software engineers to design, build, and deliver domain microservices on our middleware platform. This dual-responsibility role combines deep technical execution with leadership of third-party development teams. You will architect features, write production code, conduct code reviews, and guide offshore/contractor teams to ensure high-quality delivery. The ideal candidate thrives in a player-coach model: rolling up sleeves to solve complex technical problems while mentoring and directing 3PL teams.

Requirements

5+ years professional software development experience with Java/Spring Boot or similar enterprise frameworks.
Proven hands-on experience building REST APIs and microservices in production environments.
Strong coding skills with ability to write clean, performant, maintainable code.
Experience leading or mentoring offshore/contractor teams in a player-coach capacity.
Deep understanding of REST API design, JSON, OpenAPI specifications, and API versioning.
Proficiency with Spring Boot ecosystem: Spring Security, Spring Data, Spring Cloud.
Experience with distributed systems concepts: circuit breakers, retries, caching, eventual consistency.
Hands-on experience with Git, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and Kubernetes deployments.
Strong code review skills with ability to provide actionable, constructive feedback.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills for guiding distributed teams across time zones.

Nice To Haves

Experience integrating with mainframe systems (z/OS, CICS, MQ) or legacy enterprise platforms.
Familiarity with CIS platforms (MACSS, GigaWatt) or utility industry domain knowledge.
Background with Kafka event-driven architecture, CDC patterns, or event sourcing.
Experience with Redis caching, Oracle databases, and SQL query optimization.
Knowledge of OAuth2/OIDC, API gateways (Azure APIM), and API security best practices.
Familiarity with observability tools: Splunk, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger.
Experience with Resilience4j or similar fault tolerance libraries.
Previous experience leading offshore development teams in India, Latin America, or Eastern Europe.
Background working in Agile/Scrum environments with distributed teams.
Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE Programmer
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
Spring Professional Certification

Responsibilities

Design and implement microservices using Spring Boot 3.X+ and Java 21+ on the core middleware framework.
Build REST APIs following OpenAPI 3.0 standards with proper versioning, error handling, and documentation.
Develop integration workflows with z/OS Connect (MACSS), GigaWatt REST APIs, and Kafka event streams.
Implement Hybrid CIS routing logic leveraging the Redis-backed routing engine for account/capability-level decisions.
Write clean, maintainable, testable code with comprehensive unit and integration tests achieving >80% code coverage.
Leverage framework capabilities: OAuth2 security, circuit breakers, structured logging, distributed tracing, secrets management.
Optimize service performance, handle edge cases, and ensure graceful degradation under failure scenarios.
Participate in on-call rotation and respond to production incidents.
Lead and mentor offshore/contractor developers (3-6 engineers) delivering features and user stories.
Conduct architecture and design reviews for work assigned to 3PL teams.
Perform thorough code reviews ensuring adherence to standards, best practices, and framework patterns.
Break down complex features into well-defined technical tasks with clear acceptance criteria.
Provide technical guidance on integration patterns, data modeling, error handling, and testing strategies.
Identify knowledge gaps and provide training on framework capabilities, domain context, and coding standards.
Monitor 3PL team velocity, code quality, and escalate blockers or quality concerns.
Ensure 3PL deliverables meet production readiness criteria before merge.
Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting for features you deliver.
Ensure services meet SLOs for latency, availability, and error rates.
Follow secure coding practices: input validation, secrets handling, PII protection, OAuth2 flows.
Partner with the Lead Software Engineer on service architecture and technical decisions.
Collaborate with product owners and business analysts to refine requirements and clarify acceptance criteria.
Work with QA engineers to define test plans and reproduce/fix defects.
Coordinate with the core framework team to leverage new capabilities or report issues.
Represent the team in technical design discussions and cross-service integration planning.
Contribute to team knowledge base, runbooks, and technical documentation.