Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
4–8 years of backend development experience with Java (Java 8+ / Spring Boot, Spring Cloud).
Hands-on experience with AWS services (Lambda, S3, RDS, ECS/EKS, CloudWatch, IAM).
Strong knowledge of Apache Kafka (producers, consumers, schema registry, stream processing).
Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines and version control (Git).
Solid understanding of microservices architecture and RESTful APIs.
Experience with relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, MongoDB).
Knowledge of containerization & orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
Experience with Terraform/CloudFormation for Infrastructure as Code.
Familiarity with monitoring & logging tools (ELK Stack, Prometheus, Grafana).
Exposure to message queues (SQS, RabbitMQ) or streaming frameworks (Kafka Streams, Flink, Spark Streaming).
Certifications in AWS or Kafka are a plus.