Architecture & Systems Design 

• Architect and evolve Java and Node.js-based event-driven microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), ensuring scalability, resiliency, and observability. 

• Apply domain-driven design (DDD) principles to model core domain capabilities with clean service boundaries. 

• Design and implement integration patterns (synchronous APIs, async messaging, event streams, pub/sub) across internal and external systems. 

• Abstract external system interfaces (POS, payments, loyalty, fulfillment, etc.) from our domain services to ensure maintainability and vendor flexibility. 

• Drive adoption of blue/green and canary deployment strategies for zero-downtime releases. 

• Architect multi-region deployments with active-active or active-passive failover for global resiliency. 

• Define and optimize edge caching strategies using Cloudflare (preferred) or other modern CDNs/reverse proxies. 

• Lead adoption of customer identity management solutions, leveraging Auth0 and/or Azure AD B2C with best practices for security and compliance. 

• Apply GenAI capabilities (LLMs, embeddings, prompt orchestration) to backend services, including customer personalization, search, knowledge retrieval, and operations automation. 

Delivery & Execution 

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for CI/CD automation using Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions. 

• Establish standards for integration automation testing across Java and Node.js microservices and APIs, with automated gates in pipelines. 

• Champion automation-first practices: infrastructure as code (Terraform/Bicep), automated testing, performance validation, and observability. 

• Decompose complex initiatives into actionable deliverables across geo-distributed agile teams. 

Collaboration & Influence 

• Partner with architects, engineering managers, and product leaders to align on technical direction, roadmap, and release strategies. 

• Facilitate DDD workshops, design reviews, and integration architecture sessions across teams. 

• Influence technical decision-making across geo-distributed agile teams, ensuring both velocity and platform health. 

• Partner with product and data teams to identify GenAI use cases and integrate them into core digital services. 

Mentorship & Growth 

• Mentor engineers in DDD, integration patterns, Kubernetes, Istio, KEDA, automation best practices, and microservice design in Java and Node.js. 

• Promote a culture of quality-first, automation-first engineering. 

• Enable teams to design resilient services that abstract vendor dependencies and scale globally. 

• Proven track record delivering enterprise-scale e-commerce platforms with high availability and resiliency. 

• Strong, hands-on expertise in Java (Spring Boot) and Node.js microservices. 

• Deep expertise in Azure Cloud Services: AKS, Event Hubs, Service Bus, Cosmos DB, App Gateway, Front Door, and related services. 

• Hands-on production experience with: 

• Kubernetes (AKS) for container orchestration. 

• Istio for service mesh traffic management, observability, and mTLS. 

• KEDA for event-driven autoscaling. 

• Strong experience in: 

• Domain-driven design (DDD). 

• Integration patterns for APIs, messaging, and events. 

• Abstracting external system interfaces from core domain capabilities. 

• Proven expertise architecting and operating multi-region deployments with failover, disaster recovery, and global resiliency. 

• Applied experience with Generative AI services (Azure OpenAI, OpenAI APIs, or similar) — designing secure, scalable backend integrations with LLMs. 

• Strong background in blue/green and canary release strategies for cloud-native systems. 

• Experience with automation-first platforms, including: 

• CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions). 

• Integration automation testing. 

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Bicep). 

• Experience working in agile environments with geo-distributed teams. 

• Deep knowledge of customer identity management, with preference for Auth0 or Azure AD B2C.