Key Responsibilities:

1. Architecture & Design:

- Define service boundaries using DDD; create service contracts and API specifications.

- Design Kafka-based event flows (topics, partitions, retention, DLQs, idempotency).

- Choose fit-for-purpose storage (Cassandra vs PostgreSQL) for workloads:

1. Cassandra for time-series, high write throughput, and horizontal scaling.

2. PostgreSQL for transactional integrity, complex joins, and reporting.

- Engineer caching strategies using Redis/KeyDB (read-through/write-through, TTL, eviction).

- Establish NFRs (performance, availability, RPO/RTO) and capacity planning.

2. Security & Compliance:

- Implement OAuth2/OIDC, mTLS, token-based auth, key rotation, encryption at rest/in transit.

- Work with InfoSec/AppSec for threat modeling, VAPT, secure SDLC integration.

3. DevOps & Observability:

- Drive CI/CD pipelines (blue/green/canary), container orchestration (Kubernetes).

- Define SLOs/SLIs; implement metrics, logs, traces; promote proactive alerting.

4. Governance & Standards:

- Publish architecture guidelines, coding standards, and API governance (versioning, deprecation).

- Champion documentation (ADR, sequence diagrams, data flow, runbooks).

5. Mentoring & Leadership:

- Coach engineers; conduct design/code reviews; lead PoCs and migrations.

- Collaborate with Product/Delivery to align scope, timelines, and risk mitigation.

Required Technical Skills (Deep Expertise):

- Java: Java 17+, Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, reactive programming (WebFlux).

- Microservices: API Gateway, service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), resilience (Resilience4j).

- Kafka: Kafka Connect, Streams, consumer lag management, schema registry (Avro/JSON).

- Redis/KeyDB: Cluster configuration, HA, persistence (AOF/RDB), pub/sub and streams.

- Databases:

1. Cassandra: Data modeling (partition keys, clustering), consistency levels, compaction strategies.

2. PostgreSQL: Indexing strategies, partitioning, query planning, isolation levels, VACUUM.

- Cloud & Infra: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm/Terraform; AWS/Azure/GCP (EKS/AKS/GKE).

- Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, OpenTelemetry.

- Security: JWT, mTLS, secrets management (Vault/KMS), OWASP Top 10, compliance-aware design.

Soft Skills:

- Strong stakeholder communication; ability to simplify complex technical decisions.

- Ownership mindset; risk identification and mitigation.

- Mentorship; collaborative leadership across cross-functional teams.

Preferred Experience:

- Payments, reconciliation/settlement, high-throughput transaction systems.

- Event-driven architecture, CQRS, outbox/CDC patterns (Debezium).

- Performance tuning under production loads; chaos testing.