Java Software Engineer Contract Jobs in Columbus, OH

Lead Java Software Engineer

Columbus, Ohio | Hybrid, Three Days On-Site

Some lead engineering roles are primarily about coordinating projects. This one requires a senior engineer who can still work deeply within the technology.

Zaddy Solutions is recruiting a Lead Software Engineer for a global organization with an excellent reputation, strong employee benefits, and a culture where people tend to build long-term careers.

This engineer will provide technical direction for systems responsible for processing, transforming, organizing, and publishing large volumes of data. The environment includes established Java applications, large-scale batch workflows, distributed-processing technologies, and production automation that must remain dependable while the organization modernizes its architecture. The person hired will serve as a senior technical resource for the team, influence design decisions, mentor developing engineers, and remain actively involved in solving the most difficult engineering problems.

What Makes This Role Important

The organization has large, business-critical data flows that have evolved over time. Those systems need someone who can understand how they work today, keep them operating reliably, and determine how they should change for the future. This is not an architecture-only position. You will be expected to turn technical decisions into working software and help the team execute against the direction you establish. You will help answer questions such as:

• Which parts of the current architecture should be modernized first?
• How should large batch workloads be designed for reliability and recovery?
• Where would a new platform, pattern, or tool provide meaningful value?
• How can performance problems be identified before they become production incidents?
• What engineering standards will make the systems easier for other developers to support?

What You Will Lead

You will provide hands-on technical leadership across Java development, batch processing, and large-scale data systems. Your work will include:

• Designing and developing production applications using Java and related frameworks.
• Guiding the architecture of distributed data and batch-processing solutions.
• Improving data flows that support transformation, clustering, dataset publication, and index creation.
• Building, maintaining, and optimizing workloads using Apache Spark, Hadoop, Cassandra, or comparable technologies.
• Diagnosing performance, reliability, and data-quality problems across complex processing environments.
• Designing workflows that can recover from failures without duplicating or corrupting data.
• Creating and maintaining production automation using Bash and related scripting tools.
• Supporting enterprise job schedules, dependencies, recovery procedures, and long-running processes.
• Integrating data-processing workflows with existing Java, Spring, and API-based services.
• Establishing technical practices for monitoring, scripting, error handling, documentation, and operational support.
• Leading architecture discussions, technical reviews, and engineering decisions.
• Evaluating whether new technologies should be built internally or acquired from an outside provider.
• Working with product managers, engineering leaders, and other development teams to turn organizational priorities into technical plans.
• Resolving complex production issues and addressing the underlying system problems that caused them.
• Maintaining appropriate standards for data quality, security, and governance.
• Exploring responsible uses of AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, code-generation tools, and automated testing technologies.

Your Role on the Team

You will be one of the team’s most senior technical resources. That means other engineers will look to you for more than code review. You will mentor junior developers, help colleagues think through difficult design decisions, raise the team’s engineering standards, and create approaches that others can follow. The right person can lead through technical credibility while still collaborating well with people who bring different perspectives and levels of experience. This is a strong fit for someone who enjoys remaining close to the code but wants broader influence over architecture, engineering practices, and team development.

What You Need to Bring

• At least seven years of professional software-development experience.
• Deep, recent Java experience building and maintaining production applications.
• Experience serving as a technical lead or senior technical resource.
• A record of mentoring junior or developing software engineers.
• Hands-on ownership of large batch-processing systems and complex data flows.
• Experience with Apache Spark, Hadoop, Cassandra, or a comparable big-data technology.
• Strong Bash scripting experience within production batch or data-processing environments.
• Experience designing systems, evaluating architecture, and influencing technical direction.
• Knowledge of production scheduling, workflow dependencies, failure recovery, and operational documentation.
• Experience working with data from multiple sources, inconsistent schemas, or changing requirements.
• The ability to troubleshoot complex production problems and implement durable solutions.
• A bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Experience That Would Be Helpful

• Spring or Spring Boot.
• Python development or scripting.
• Performance tuning for Apache Spark or other distributed-processing frameworks.
• Dataset or search-index publication at scale.
• Enterprise batch schedulers and orchestration platforms.
• RESTful services and API integration.
• Agile software-development practices.
• AI-assisted engineering tools such as Cursor, Claude, or GitHub Copilot.
• Experience introducing new engineering tools or modernization patterns into an established environment.