Junior java developer Jobs in Houston, TX

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Java Developer with 4–8 years of professional experience to design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain scalable enterprise applications and distributed systems. The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on expertise in modern Java, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices, cloud platforms, event-driven architecture, containers, and CI/CD, along with a solid understanding of application security, observability, and system design.

Exposure to AI/LLM integration and AI-enabled application development using modern Java frameworks is highly desirable.

The candidate must be flexible regarding location and willing to relocate anywhere in the United States for the right opportunity.

Experience: 4–8 Years
Employment Type: W2 Only
Work Authorization: U.S. Citizen / Green Card / H4 EAD Only
Location: Open to opportunities across the United States
Relocation: Must be willing to relocate anywhere in the U.S. for a suitable opportunity

Cloud & Modern Development

Experience with one or more of the following:

• AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

• Cloud-native application development and deployment

• Docker and containerized application development

• Kubernetes and container orchestration

• Helm for Kubernetes application deployment

• CI/CD using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, or equivalent

• Apache Kafka or other event-streaming/messaging technologies

• Redis or other distributed caching technologies

• NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, DynamoDB, or Cassandra

• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or equivalent tools

Security & API Development

• Experience with Spring Security

• Understanding of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT

• Experience securing REST APIs and microservices

• Knowledge of API Gateway patterns and rate limiting

• Understanding of authentication, authorization, secrets management, and secure coding practices

• Familiarity with API documentation using OpenAPI/Swagger

Event-Driven & Distributed Systems

• Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka, including producers, consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, and event-driven architecture

• Understanding of asynchronous processing and messaging patterns

• Experience designing resilient and scalable distributed services

• Knowledge of fault tolerance, retries, circuit breakers, timeouts, and idempotency

• Exposure to Spring Cloud, Resilience4j, or equivalent technologies

Observability & Performance

• Experience with application and infrastructure monitoring

• Familiarity with Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Splunk, ELK/OpenSearch, or equivalent observability platforms

• Understanding of metrics, logs, distributed tracing, and application health monitoring

• Experience troubleshooting production issues and analyzing application performance

• Understanding of JVM monitoring, garbage collection, memory management, and performance tuning is a plus

AI & Modern Application Development

• Exposure to Generative AI, LLMs, or AI-enabled enterprise applications

• Experience with Spring AI, LangChain4j, or similar Java-based AI integration frameworks is a plus

• Understanding of integrating LLM APIs, embeddings, vector databases, RAG, or AI-powered APIs is desirable

• Experience building applications that consume AI/ML services through REST APIs or cloud AI platforms is a plus

Front-End Exposure

• Working knowledge of modern front-end technologies such as React, Angular, TypeScript, HTML, and CSS is a plus

• Understanding of integrating Java/Spring Boot backend services with modern web applications
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Spring Cloud and cloud-native development

• Experience with Kafka/event-driven architecture

• Experience with Kubernetes, Helm, and Docker

• Experience implementing CI/CD and DevSecOps practices

• Experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code

• Understanding of 12-factor application principles

• Experience with API design, versioning, documentation, and lifecycle management

• Strong understanding of system design, scalability, availability, reliability, and performance

• Experience working in production environments supporting highly available applications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field is preferred
  

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain scalable Java-based enterprise applications

• Build and maintain Spring Boot microservices and REST APIs

• Develop cloud-native and distributed applications

• Design and implement event-driven solutions using Kafka

• Integrate applications with relational and NoSQL databases

• Develop secure APIs using Spring Security, OAuth2/OIDC, and JWT

• Write high-quality unit, integration, and automated tests

• Participate in code reviews and maintain coding standards

• Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines

• Containerize applications using Docker and deploy them using Kubernetes

• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize applications in development and production environments

• Collaborate with architects, DevOps engineers, QA engineers, product teams, and other developers

• Participate in Agile ceremonies and contribute to technical design and architecture discussions

• Evaluate and adopt modern technologies that improve application scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity

• Contribute to AI-enabled application initiatives where applicable
  

Core Technology Stack

Java 17/21 | Spring Boot | Spring Security | REST APIs | Microservices | Kafka | SQL | MongoDB | Redis | Docker | Kubernetes | Helm | AWS/Azure/GCP | Terraform | CI/CD | JUnit 5 | Mockito | Git | OpenTelemetry | Prometheus | Grafana | OAuth2/OIDC | JWT | Spring AI | LangChain4j

Required Skills

• 4–8 years of professional experience in Java development

• Strong hands-on experience with Java 17/21, with exposure to newer Java LTS versions a plus

• Strong knowledge of Core Java, OOP, Collections, Generics, Streams, Multithreading, Concurrency, Exception Handling, and JVM fundamentals

• Strong experience with Spring Framework and Spring Boot

• Hands-on experience developing RESTful APIs and Microservices

• Strong understanding of microservices architecture, distributed systems, and service-to-service communication

• Strong experience with SQL and relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or SQL Server

• Experience with Git and Git-based development workflows

• Experience writing unit, integration, and API tests using JUnit 5, Mockito, Spring Boot Test, or equivalent frameworks

• Experience with Maven or Gradle

• Strong understanding of Agile/Scrum development methodologies

• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and problem-solving skills.

Candidate Requirements

• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. as a U.S. Citizen, Green Card holder, or H4 EAD holder.

• Must be willing to work on W2.

• Must be willing to relocate anywhere in the United States for a suitable opportunity.

• Must have 4-8 years of hands-on professional Java development experience.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills required.