NO PHONE CALLS OR DIRECT EMAILS. WILL NOT BE RETURNED.
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6-month contract
Remote
NO PHONE CALLS OR DIRECT EMAILS. WILL NOT BE RETURNED.
We are looking for a Sr. Staff Software Engineer, on a contract basis, to lead the team retiring IBM WebSphere and replacing Axway managed file transfer across client’s Document Management Platform—the enterprise shared platform built and operated by the Document Shared Services (DSS) team. The systems this team owns carry documents and files between OneMain’s branches, digital channels, vendors, and core systems.
The applications run today on OpenShift and interact heavily with client’s AWS estate; the remaining WebSphere-hosted Java workloads are being containerized and moved onto OpenShift so that WebSphere can be decommissioned. In parallel, the file transfer flows that run through Axway—inbound and outbound files exchanged with vendors, partners, and internal systems—are being re-platformed onto the DSS file ingestion service built on OpenShift and AWS so that Axway can be retired. Most of the codebase is Java; a smaller set of services is written in TypeScript.
This role steps in as the hands-on technical lead for an established engineering team and carries both programs to completion without disrupting the business. The person will co-own design decisions with DSS Engineering leadership and the DSS chief architect, lead the engineering day to day, own the delivery plan and cutover sequencing, and are the person the team and its partners look to on how these systems are built, run, and changed. Because this is a contract engagement, a core deliverable is leaving the team fully able to run and evolve everything you build.
Responsibilities:
- Step in as the technical lead for an engineering team already delivering, and keep its momentum. Own the delivery plan for both the WebSphere elimination and the Axway replacement: scope the remaining work, sequence it, set milestones and exit criteria, and report progress and risk to DSS Engineering leadership in terms they can act on.
- Plan every cutover so never noticed it. Design for coexistence while old and new run side by side, prove each step in production before taking the next, and keep a tested rollback for every change.
- Inventory the Java applications and services still hosted on IBM WebSphere Application Server, and for each one decide whether to lift, refactor, or retire.
- Move the workloads that stay onto containerized runtimes on OpenShift (Spring Boot, Open Liberty, or Quarkus), remove WebSphere-specific dependencies (JNDI resources, EJBs, WebSphere MQ bindings, container-managed security, and deployment descriptors), and modernize the build and deployment pipeline as part of the move.
- Drive the program to its finish line: every application migrated and validated, the WebSphere footprint decommissioned, and licensing and infrastructure released.
- Lead the design and delivery of the file transfer capability that replaces Axway. Catalog every inbound and outbound file flow that runs through Axway today—vendor and partner exchanges, internal system feeds, scheduled batch drops—with its protocol, schedule, encryption, and consumer. Build out the DSS file ingestion service on OpenShift and AWS to carry those flows: secure transfer endpoints, file validation and routing, scheduling and retries, PGP handling, dead-letter and replay, and an audit trail that satisfies Compliance.
- Migrate each flow without dropping a file: onboard partners to the new endpoints, run parallel where the flow warrants it, cut over, and confirm downstream consumers. Retire Axway once the last flow is moved.
- Own the patterns for services that run on OpenShift and depend heavily on AWS: connectivity and network paths between the two, IAM and secrets handling, S3-backed storage, AWS messaging and eventing, and observability that spans both. Make the hybrid topology reliable and understood, and decide which components belong on OpenShift and which belong in AWS as the platform evolves.
- Treat availability as a first-class requirement. Know which flows are on the loan-origination critical path, set service-level objectives for them, and build observability, alerting, capacity headroom, graceful degradation, and tested failover into every critical flow. Lead incident response and root-cause analysis for incidents in these systems, and drive the changes that prevent recurrence.
- Lead the integration points between these systems and client’s mainframe, branch infrastructure, and vendor platforms—file transfer, batch, message-based (Kafka and IBM MQ), and API (GraphQL and REST). Partner with the teams that own those systems on interface contracts, change coordination, and release sequencing so that changes on either side land safely.
- Set and model standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, and iterative delivery. Review designs and code, mentor engineers on the team, and bring cloud-native patterns, infrastructure as code, and Agile delivery into how the team works day to day.
- Transfer knowledge. Document how each critical system works, automate what is done by hand today, write and test the runbooks, and cross-train the team so that every system on the critical path has more than one engineer who can run and change it.
- Work with DSS Product and Engineering leadership to turn the platform roadmap into technical plans: estimate and sequence the work, surface dependencies and risks early, and explain technical tradeoffs in terms business partners can act on.
Requirements:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including several years as the technical lead for teams owning production systems the business depends on, with a track record of keeping them available through change.
- Direct experience leading at least one platform retirement or major migration program end to end—scoping, sequencing, cutover, and decommissioning—without disrupting the business.
- Experience managing and maintaining distributed systems.
- Conversant in many technologies and languages, and able to learn new technologies quickly.
- Proactively applies industry-leading technology trends, best practices, design principles and patterns, and methods including Agile software development, iterative delivery, and cloud computing.
- Experience and proficiency with cloud platforms and patterns, preferably AWS.
- Deep Java expertise, including hands-on experience with IBM WebSphere Application Server (or another Java EE application server) and with migrating those workloads to Spring Boot, Open Liberty, Quarkus, or similar runtimes on Kubernetes.
- Working proficiency in TypeScript and Node.js services.
- Hands-on experience with managed file transfer: Axway (SecureTransport or B2Bi) or a comparable platform (IBM Sterling, GoAnywhere, MOVEit), including SFTP/FTPS/AS2 protocols, PGP encryption, scheduling, partner onboarding, and audit requirements.
- Experience building and running containerized workloads on OpenShift or Kubernetes: images, Helm or operators, routes and ingress, secrets, resource tuning, and CI/CD into the cluster.
- Hands-on experience building on AWS: S3, IAM, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, Lambda, and AWS Transfer Family, and connecting on-prem or OpenShift workloads to AWS securely.
- Hands-on experience with messaging and event streaming—Kafka and IBM MQ—including delivery guarantees, ordering, replay, and dead-letter handling.
- Depth in GraphQL and REST API design and Postgres.
- Experience integrating with mainframe systems and on-prem legacy platforms, and modernizing or retiring them without disrupting the business.
- A track record of reducing operational risk: documentation, automation, runbooks, and cross-training that make systems runnable by others.
- Uses critical thinking to reach conclusions and analytical thinking for problem solving in support of achieving desired outcomes.
- Applies enthusiasm for continuous learning to improve results and shares it with others.
- Experience stepping into an in-flight program as a contractor or consultant and leading it to completion.
- Experience with document-centric systems (capture, content management, document generation, e-signature, archive) or another high-volume, regulated data domain is a plus.
We look forward to receiving your resume in PDF format!
