So, what’s the role all about?

A Specialist Software Engineer in Java is a senior technical expert within the Data Engineering team, recognized for deep, hands-on mastery of our streaming and data platform stack. This role goes beyond feature delivery-the Specialist owns complex architectural decisions, drives engineering best practices across the team, and is the go-to authority on distributed data systems, performance, and reliability. We are looking for engineers who combine strong core engineering depth with the ability to mentor others and champion AI-assisted development and agentic workflows across the team. Here’s an overview of the key responsibilities and qualifications for this role:

How will you make an impact?

• Own the architecture and technical design of complex data solutions, from ideation through deployment and long-term evolution.
• Act as the technical authority on streaming and data pipeline design, guiding key decisions on Kafka, Flink, and downstream integrations.
• Drive engineering best practices across the team -code quality, design patterns, testing standards, and system observability.
• Lead and participate in design reviews, providing technical direction to Senior and Software Engineers, and unblocking cross-team technical challenges.
• Mentor and coach engineers across levels, raising the technical bar of the team and supporting their growth.
• Take ownership of system reliability, scalability, and performance for critical data services, including proactive identification of risks.
• Champion security and data protection practices, ensuring solutions meet compliance and governance requirements by design.
• Partner with Product, Program Management, and other Engineering teams to shape the Business Change cycle from inception through implementation and coordinate build and release activities with key stakeholders.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted development and agentic workflows across the team - building, refining, and scaling reusable skills, agents, and automation pipelines rather than only using existing tools.
• Represent Engineering in cross-team and cross-region technical forums, influencing platform-level decisions.

Have you got what it takes?

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Business Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 8+ years of experience in software development, with a track record of technical ownership beyond individual feature delivery.
• Deep, demonstrable expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and Microservices architecture and design patterns.
• Advanced, hands-on experience with the streaming technology stack: Kafka and Apache Flink including performance tuning, scaling, and troubleshooting production issues.
• Strong working expertise in AWS (Kinesis, EKS, S3, Lambda, IAM, CloudWatch, etc.), including designing for scale and cost efficiency.
• Proven, hands-on experience building with Agentic AI tools such as Claude (Anthropic), GitHub Copilot, Copilot Agent Mode, Claude Code, or equivalent - required, not just familiarity.
• Practical experience building and maintaining MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, AI prompt engineering, Plugins and AI-powered automation pipelines used in day-to-day engineering, in addition to having working knowledge of RAG patterns, embeddings, and vector database trade-offs
• Demonstrated track record of scaling AI-assisted engineering practices across a team e.g., building reusable skills, driving AI-based code review standards, or automating recurring engineering workflows is a strong differentiator.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and decision-making skills, with the ability to influence technical direction across teams.
• Solid experience with Orchestration and Containerization tools like Kubernetes, Docker.
• Experience with databases like Snowflake is good to have.
• Experience in CI/CD practices - Git, GitHub Actions, Jenkins-based pipeline deployments.
• Strong expertise in SQL and data modeling.
• Strong command of unit testing practices and driving test coverage standards across the team.
• Deep understanding of user stories, use cases, design patterns, and object-oriented software design with the judgment to know when and how to apply them.
• A natural mentor and collaborator, comfortable operating with high autonomy while lifting the technical capability of those around them.

What’s in it for you?

• Join an ever-growing, market disrupting, global company where the teams- comprised of the best of the best - work in a fast-paced, collaborative, and creative environment! As the market leader, every day at NICE is a chance to learn and grow, and there are endless internal career opportunities across multiple roles, disciplines, domains, and locations. If you are passionate, innovative, and excited to constantly raise the bar, you may just be our next NICEr!

Enjoy NICE-FLEX!

• At NICE, we work according to the NICE-FLEX hybrid model, which enables maximum flexibility: 2 days working from the office and 3 days of remote work, each week. Naturally, office days focus on face-to-face meetings, where teamwork and collaborative thinking generate innovation, new ideas, and a vibrant, interactive atmosphere.

Requisition ID: 11519

Reporting into: Tech Manager

Role Type: Individual Contributor