Java Software Architect

Kforce has a client in Tampa, FL that is seeking a Java Software Architect. Summary: This role supports a high-volume field operations environment by partnering directly with front-line agents, leadership, and the development organization to understand pain points, uncover gaps, and design scalable solutions. You'll be the senior technical voice embedded with the daily workflow-guiding architecture, shaping strategy, and building tools that reduce friction for technicians in the field. The team has invested heavily in automation and AI over the past year, and your work will directly influence how those efforts mature. Field & Business Alignment:

• Work onsite with local operations teams to observe workflows, gather pain points, and translate real-world issues into technical requirements
• Meet regularly with field support agents and leadership to understand bottlenecks and identify improvement opportunities

• Architect end-to-end solutions across services, data flows, integrations, and event-driven patterns
• Design distributed systems, APIs, and automation workflows to reduce manual tasks and streamline ticket handling
• Drive modernization efforts across cloud, containerization, and CI/CD practices
• Partner with project management and engineering to shape technical roadmaps aligned to business outcomes

• Establish non-functional requirements, performance expectations, and reliability patterns (retries, backpressure, circuit breaking)
• Ensure security best practices in authentication, authorization, encryption, and secrets management
• Support observability efforts across logging, metrics, tracing, and capacity planning
• 8-12 years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in a senior/architectural capacity supporting large-scale systems
• Strong experience building with Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, SQL, and distributed microservices
• Hands-on expertise with AWS or GCP, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and IaC tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation
• Deep understanding of event-driven architecture, streaming, relational/NoSQL databases, caching, and integration design
• Comfortable working directly with non-technical business partners and simplifying technical concepts
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence, document decisions, and guide engineering teams

• Experience with domain-driven design and clean architecture concepts
• Background integrating AI/ML capabilities into production systems
• Strong performance-tuning skills for high-throughput or cost-sensitive environments