Junior Java Software Engineer Jobs in Aurora, IL

Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, is part of the U.S. family of brands, which also includes five leading omnichannel grocery brands – Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Ahold Delhaize USA associates support the brands with a wide range of services, including Finance, Legal, Sustainability, Commercial, Digital and E-commerce, Technology and more.

This role exists to design and deliver highly scalable, resilient data processing systems that power critical enterprise workflows, including financial and accounting systems downstream of Point-of-Sale (POS) platforms.

The Engineer IV operates as a senior technical leader, driving architecture, development, and operational excellence across distributed systems in a cloud-native Azure ecosystem. This position ensures data integrity, system performance, and reliability at scale while enabling modernization and continuous improvement of core business capabilities.

Our flexible/hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days at one of our core locations. Our core office locations include Salisbury, NC, Quincy, MA, Scarborough, ME, and Chicago, IL.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.

• Design and implement scalable, event-driven data processing solutions using Java and cloud-native technologies to support high-volume POS transaction flows.
• Architect and optimize distributed systems leveraging Kafka, Azure services (Databricks, Data Lake, Blob storage, containers, etc.).
• Lead development of robust data pipelines that ensure accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of data flowing into critical downstream systems including mainframe-based accounting platforms.
• Drive system reliability through proactive monitoring, alerting, and performance tuning of high-throughput, low-latency systems using Data Dog.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across distributed environments, including data inconsistencies, pipeline failures, and integration breakdowns.
• Champion DevOps best practices, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code, and deployment automation.
• Contribute to architectural decisions and long-term technical strategy, including modernization efforts and reduction of technical debt.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, business, and platform teams to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Mentor and guide engineers, providing technical leadership, code reviews, and best practice enforcement.
• Participate in on-call rotations and lead response efforts during critical incidents to ensure system uptime and business continuity.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent years of work experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong coding, testing, and debugging skills.
• Experience with cloud, automation, and DevOps tools.
• Strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.
• Strong expertise in Java and backend service development.
• Deep understanding of event-driven architecture and streaming platforms (Kafka).
• Experience building and maintaining large-scale data pipelines.
• Cloud-native development experience in Azure in particular with these specific services: AKS, Data Storage Containers/Blob Storage, ADF pipelines.
• Strong debugging and root cause analysis skills in distributed systems.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, automation, and DevOps practices.
• Ability to design for scalability, resiliency, and fault tolerance.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to bridge technical and business conversations.

• Experience with distributed system design.
• Experience in retail, POS systems, or financial transaction processing environments.
• Experience with large-scale data processing frameworks.
• Experience with Databricks.
• Knowledge of data governance, data quality, and reconciliation processes.
• Experience leading technical initiatives or mentoring junior engineers.
• Exposure to high-availability, mission-critical systems with strict SLAs.

Salary Range: $146,960-$220,440