Apptad-Java Application Architect

Job Title: Java Application Architect

Location: Chandler AZ (Hybrid)

We are looking for a highly experienced Java Application Architect III to lead the design development and continuous improvement of our enterprise-scale API gateway platform. This role is ideal for a technically deep engineer with extensive hands-on experience in API and gateway solutions combined with strong architectural influence standards enforcement and best practice guidance across multiple teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and enforce API design standards including RESTful principles versioning error handling and backward compatibility.
• Lead the architecture and implementation of scalable secure and observable API gateway solutions supporting high-throughput business-critical services.
• Drive the evolution of API management practices including onboarding governance lifecycle management deprecation and retirement strategies.
• Implement and optimize gateway functionalities such as routing transformation traffic management authentication and policy enforcement.
• Develop automation scripts and operational workflows using Python to improve platform reliability and efficiency.
• Design and implement automated API testing frameworks covering functional integration regression and performance validation.
• Ensure comprehensive observability through metrics logs traces alerting and SLO-driven monitoring.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including application developers security and operations to align architecture with organizational standards.
• Mentor engineering teams influence technical decisions and shape platform-level improvements and best practices.
• Integrate API gateways with enterprise identity providers and security platforms ensuring compliance and security.

Requirements:

• 8 years of overall software or platform engineering experience.
• 5 years of hands-on experience designing building and operating API platforms or gateway solutions in production environments.
• Deep expertise in API design: RESTful APIs versioning backward compatibility and error-handling patterns.
• Strong experience with security protocols such as OAuth2 OpenID Connect JWT mTLS and API key management.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in high-throughput distributed systems.
• Advanced proficiency in Java with experience in API gateway or service-oriented architectures.
• Strong Python skills for automation tooling and operational workflows.
• Extensive experience with designing and implementing automated API testing (functional integration regression performance).
• Expertise in observability and telemetry including metrics logs traces alerting and SLO-driven monitoring.
• Hands-on experience with Git code reviews CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with enterprise-grade API gateway platforms such as Apigee Kong Azure API Management or AWS API Gateway.
• Strong understanding of API lifecycle management including onboarding governance versioning deprecation and retirement at scale.
• Practical experience defining and enforcing traffic management and security policies like rate limiting throttling quotas and request/response transformations.
• Familiarity with service mesh ingress controllers or edge routing technologies and their integration with API gateways.
• Experience integrating APIs with enterprise identity providers and security platforms.
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment strategies for API gateway configurations.
• Exposure to performance/load testing to validate scalability resiliency and failure handling.
• Strong architectural mindset with the ability to identify systemic risks and drive platform-level improvements.
• Demonstrated leadership in mentoring engineers and influencing cross-team technical strategies.