Looking for a job

Jerry Thomas

@jerrythomas

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I lead cloud-native Java platforms, modernizing architectures with hands-on technical guidance.

Zimbabwe

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What I'm looking for

Open to Technical Lead, Staff/Lead Java Backend Engineer, and Senior Java Cloud Engineer opportunities.

I’m a Java technical lead and Staff Engineer with 20 years delivering large-scale enterprise Java platforms and leading technical initiatives across energy, banking, and public-sector domains.

I drive architecture decisions and support engineering teams through technical guidance, code reviews, and design discussions, modernizing applications using Java, Spring, distributed systems, and cloud-native engineering practices. As a hands-on practitioner, I build production-grade reference platforms leveraging AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and Kafka—using measurable impact like reducing AWS operational expenditure by 40% through serverless architecture improvements.

Most recently, I’ve been independent, designing enterprise-grade cloud-native reference platforms featuring reactive microservices, event-driven systems, API gateways, distributed resilience, and GitOps deployment models. I focus on secure, scalable, and maintainable solutions—building CI/CD, automated security scanning, containerized deployments, and observability dashboards (Prometheus/Grafana)—while ensuring teams can ship reliable outcomes.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Cloud-Native Technical Lead

Current

Independent Consultant

Apr 2025 - Present (1 year 2 months)

Designed and implemented cloud-native enterprise reference platforms for reactive microservices, event-driven systems, and GitOps deployments, including a payments platform using Spring Boot WebFlux, Quarkus, PostgreSQL, OAuth2, and Spring Cloud Gateway. Built a Kafka-based resilient data platform and production foundations (CI/CD, automated security scanning, and Prometheus/Grafana observability)

Java Webflux Quarkus AWS Kubernetes Docker Apache Kafka GitOps Observability

Senior Java Engineer TL

Baker Hughes Inc.

Apr 2015 - Mar 2025 (9 years 11 months)

Led development of a cloud-native SaaS platform and built scalable serverless AWS Lambda tasks using Node.js for real-time edge data streaming, reducing cloud operational expenditure by 40%. Drove security remediation with Checkmarx and BlackDuck findings, enforced OAuth2 token-based authentication across microservices via centralized API Gateway validation, and improved long-term stability throug

Java Spring Boot Spring Cloud AWS Lambda OAUTH2 API Gateway MongoDB

Associate Consultant / Analyst

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

May 2005 - Apr 2015 (9 years 11 months)

Provided 24/7 production support for a high-volume foreign exchange (FX) trading platform and applied TDD with JUnit test runners to eliminate regression defects. Owned reusable core assets across the organization, reducing feature bootstrapping time by 30%, while performing security and performance analysis using Fuse ESB, Spring Framework, and web services.

Java J2EE Junit Test Driven Development Fuse ESB Spring Framework Web Services Hibernate