Java Chapter Lead - Core Banking @ ING Hubs Romania

About the Position

Java Chapter Lead - Core Banking @ ING Hubs Romania

ING Hubs Romania is seeking a Java Chapter Lead for Core Banking to join our dynamic team. This hands-on role combines engineering contributions (40–60%) with people leadership (40–60%). You will lead a chapter of Java engineers working across multiple squads in the Core Banking and Easy Financing domains, supporting GermanyRetail.

Responsibilities

Engineering Contribution

• Design, build, and maintain Java (17+) Spring Boot microservices
• Maintain and evolve a legacy monolithic middleware and drive its incremental decomposition into microservices
• Design and evolve REST APIs, domain models, and integration contracts
• Design and evolve event-driven architectures using Kafka
• Drive system reliability, scalability, and performance improvements
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across environments (test, acceptance, production)

Technical Leadership

• Define and enforce engineering standards and best practices across squads
• Contribute to architecture decisions (service boundaries, data models, integration patterns)
• Guide the evolution from monolith to distributed systems, ensuring pragmatic trade-offs
• Drive improvements in CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and developer experience
• Ensure strong testing strategies (unit, integration, performance) are consistently applied
• Support cross-team alignment on design and implementation decisions

Chapter / People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a chapter of engineers across multiple squads
• Drive performance, accountability, and continuous improvement within the chapter
• Provide structured feedback and support career development
• Identify and address performance gaps proactively
• Align skills development with domain and technology needs
• Collaborate with other Chapter Leads and IT Area Leads to improve engineering maturity
• Support hiring and onboarding of engineers

Requirements

• Experience

  • 7–10+ years experience in backend development in enterprise/distributed systems
  • Proven experience as a technical lead, senior engineer, or people lead
  • Experience designing and evolving distributed systems and microservices architectures
  • Experience working in complex integration environments (APIs, event-driven systems)

• Technical Skills (Mandatory)

  • Strong experience with Java (17+) and Spring Boot
  • Solid understanding of REST API design and contract evolution
  • Distributed systems and microservices patterns
  • Event-driven architecture (e.g., Kafka)
  • Experience with testing strategies (unit, integration, performance)
  • Familiarity with CI/CD practices and modern SDLC
  • Strong problem-solving and system design skills
  • Experience with Docker, OpenShift, Azure DevOps

• Leadership & Collaboration

  • Experience mentoring or leading engineers
  • Ability to drive engineering standards, accountability, and team performance
  • Strong collaboration skills across squads, domains, and stakeholders
  • Comfortable operating in Agile environments

Nice to Have

• Experience in core banking, payments, or lending domains
• Exposure to legacy system modernization
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or a related field

We Offer

• Opportunity to work in a flexible and collaborative environment
• Be part of a highly skilled team with a shared desire to make the world a better place
• Professional growth and development opportunities
• Competitive compensation package

About the Company

ING Hubs Romania offers 130 services in software development, data management, non-financial risk & compliance, audit, and retail operations to 24 ING units worldwide, with the help of over 2000 high-performing engineers, risk, and operations professionals. We provide borderless services with bank-wide capabilities and operate from two locations: Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca.

For us, impact isn't a perk. It's the driver of our work. We are guided and rewarded by a shared desire to make the world a better place, one innovative solution at a time. Our colleagues make it their job to do impactful things and they love doing it in good company. Do you?

Apply now and join our team to drive technical excellence and engineering standards while growing and mentoring engineers within the chapter.