Technical Lead
Position Description
CGI is seeking a hands-on, forward-thinking Technical Lead and engineering culture champion to drive architecture, operational stabilization, mature SDLC practices, and cloud modernization for the mission-critical portfolio at a major federal agency. Our engineering team is executing a multi-year modernization of the enterprise backbone that governs and automates federal procurement contracts - transitioning legacy client-server desktop tools and nightly data synchronization feeds into a modern, cloud-native AWS ecosystem.
You will serve as the technical anchor and quality standard-bearer for an Agile engineering team navigating a complex multi-tier system evolution spanning Java backend microservices, enterprise JBoss EAP middleware, automated Spring Batch ETL feeds, Amazon Aurora MySQL database clusters, and desktop client-server integrations. In this role, you will institute disciplined engineering best practices, establish automated testing and schema migration frameworks from the ground up, diagnose and resolve database and messaging bottlenecks, guide the modernization of core procurement systems, and elevate collective team craftsmanship across all tiers.
This position is located in our Fairfax, VA office; however, a hybrid working model is acceptable
Your future duties and responsibilities
- Architectural Leadership & SDLC Governance: Provide technical vision, hands-on architectural leadership, and engineering oversight across the 7 interconnected systems of the portfolio. Institute and champion modern SDLC best practices across the team, establishing disciplined development workflows, structured design reviews, and high engineering standards.
- Code Quality, Review Culture & Software Craftsmanship: Establish and enforce rigorous peer code review processes, static code analysis quality gates (e.g., SonarQube), and automated linting. Coach and hold the engineering team accountable to clean, maintainable, self-documenting code, actively retiring technical debt and legacy anti-patterns.
- Automated Testing Strategy & Coverage Culture: Champion a comprehensive automated testing culture from the ground up; establish test coverage baselines and build robust, CI-integrated test suites (unit, integration, regression, and end-to-end with JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers) to create a reliable safety net for rapid, confident deployments.
- Database Tuning & Schema Migration Pipelines: Lead the root-cause diagnosis and remediation of database bottlenecks in Amazon Aurora MySQL. Implement automated, version-controlled database schema migration tooling (e.g., Flyway, Liquibase) to replace manual database interventions with repeatable, automated CI/CD deployments.
- Asynchronous Messaging & SQS Migration: Architect and drive the modernization of embedded messaging subsystems to cloud-native queues and worker services.
- Client/Server Modernization Oversight: Direct the technical stabilization of the operational desktop procurement client, guiding the modernization roadmap toward future modular web frontends.
- Batch Ingestion & Integration Pipelines: Oversee the architecture and operational health of high-volume nightly data ingestion and synchronization pipelines built on Spring Batch, integrating external federal endpoints.
- Cloud Infrastructure & GitOps Deployments: Deploy, manage, and monitor containerized microservices on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) within managed cloud environments, utilizing GitOps pipelines (Flux CD, Helm releases).
- On Premise Decommissioning: Lead architectural analysis and engineering efforts to decouple remaining on-premise dependencies to modern cloud-native REST and event-driven patterns.
- Identity & Access Control Architecture: Maintain and enforce authentication and authorization standards across disparate web portals and desktop clients, integrating SAML 2.0 / Okta SSO.
- Mentorship, Continuous Learning & Stakeholder Partnership: Lead by example to foster a team culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous learning. Mentor mid-level and junior developers through hands-on pairing and constructive architectural critique, while partnering closely with application users, product owners, and solution architects to define technical roadmaps and deliver accurate estimates.
Required qualifications to be successful in this role
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or other technical discipline.
- Minimum 7+ years of hands-on enterprise Java engineering experience (Java 17, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, JBoss EAP / WildFly, RESTful APIs, SOAP web services).
- Relational database experience with MySQL or Amazon Aurora MySQL (or similar RDBMS), including schema design, query optimization, and migration tooling (Flyway).
- Proven track record as a technical leader who has successfully established or matured SDLC best practices - including instituting formal code review standards, disciplined branching workflows, and elevated code quality baselines within existing teams or brownfield projects.
- Demonstrated commitment to software quality and test automation, with hands-on experience establishing automated test suites (unit, integration, regression with JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers) and driving meaningful test coverage improvements in complex codebases.
- Hands-on experience implementing automated, version-controlled database schema migration tooling (e.g., Flyway, Liquibase) integrated into automated CI/CD release pipelines.
- Experience integrating and enforcing automated code quality, security, and static analysis tooling (e.g., SonarQube, Checkstyle, OWASP dependency checks) within build pipelines.
- Proven experience designing and managing enterprise asynchronous messaging architectures and migrating workloads to cloud messaging services (Amazon SQS, FIFO queues, Dead Letter Queues).
- Proven experience deploying, troubleshooting, and operating containerized microservices on AWS (Amazon EKS, ECS, Docker, RDS Proxy, AWS Secrets Manager, S3).
- Experience with GitOps methodologies and automated CI/CD tooling (Flux CD, Helm, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
- Hands-on proficiency with database persistence frameworks and SQL mapping tools (MyBatis, raw JDBC).
- Familiarity with enterprise client-server desktop software architecture (e.g., PowerBuilder, C/ODBC database drivers, Windows VDI/Citrix environments) and strategies for modernizing legacy clients into service-oriented web applications.
- Experience with API security, federated authentication, and authorization best practices (OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0, Okta, TLS/PKI, JWT, RBAC).
- Strong diagnostic and root-cause problem-solving mindset with a passion for eliminating technical debt, refactoring legacy anti-patterns, and coaching engineers to high standards.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to convey complex technical trade-offs and quality standards to both engineers and government stakeholders.
Desired qualifications/non essential skills required:
- Specific experience supporting or modernizing desktop applications, ex PowerBuilder
- Experience building and maintaining modern frontend applications using TypeScript, HTML5, CSS/SCSS, and Angular (v14+).
- Experience with AWS managed integration and data services (AWS Transfer Family / SFTP, AWS DMS, AWS Lambda, EventBridge, OpenSearch).
- Experience with legacy data migration.
- Experience with document generation libraries (e.g., iText PDF engine).
- Familiarity with federal acquisition operations or federal data systems (SAM.gov, FPDS-NG).
- Experience with automated testing and performance profiling tools (Cypress, Selenium, JMeter, Gatling).
- Project management and collaboration tools – JIRA, Confluence
CGI is required by law in some jurisdictions to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation range for this role. The determination of this range includes various factors not limited to skill set, level, experience, relevant training, and licensure and certifications. To support the ability to reward for merit based performance, CGI typically does not hire individuals at or near the top of the range for their role. Compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range for this role in the U.S. is $89,600.00 $194,000.00.
CGI Federal's benefits are offered to eligible professionals on their first day of employment to include:
. Competitive compensation
. Comprehensive insurance options
. Matching contributions through the 401(k) plan and the share purchase plan
. Paid time off for vacation, holidays, and sick time
. Paid parental leave
. Learning opportunities and tuition assistance
. Wellness and Well being programs
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