Java Architect – Agentic AI & Legacy Modernization || Merrill Lynch, NJ – Onsite

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Sourabh Diwakar

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11:37 AM (7 hours ago) 11:37 AM
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Java Architect – Agentic AI & Legacy Modernization

Location: Merrill Lynch, NJ – Onsite
Job Type: C2C / Contract

 

Job Summary

We are seeking a Senior Technology Lead – Agentic AI & Legacy Modernization to lead the design and delivery of AI-driven modernization initiatives. This is a highly hands-on technical leadership role focused on combining Agentic AI, legacy system modernization, and cloud-native engineering.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience building custom AI agent pipelines and multi-agent systems, while also possessing deep expertise in legacy technologies such as COBOL, CICS, IMS, DB2, JCL, IBM MQ, and modern technologies including Java 21, Spring Boot, Angular, MongoDB, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms.

The candidate will lead cross-functional engineering teams, own solution architecture, perform code reviews, build AI agents, and drive modernization initiatives from legacy analysis through migration and production deployment.

 

Key Responsibilities

Agentic AI & AI-Driven Modernization

  • Design and deploy custom AI agent pipelines to analyze and reverse-engineer legacy applications.
  • Build multi-agent workflows for code analysis, business-rule extraction, data mapping, testing, and modernization.
  • Develop agentic solutions using platforms/frameworks such as Claude Code CLI, Cursor, Gemini CLI, LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, and CrewAI.
  • Implement tool/function calling, RAG, agent memory, human-in-the-loop workflows, and validation mechanisms.
  • Develop prompt engineering strategies for code extraction, generation, validation, and refinement.
  • Evaluate agent output quality and implement validation frameworks to minimize hallucinations and ensure accuracy.
  • Work with LLM APIs such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI GPT, or equivalent platforms.

Legacy Modernization

  • Analyze and reverse-engineer legacy COBOL, CICS, IMS, DB2, JCL, Assembler, IBM MQ, and related systems.
  • Extract business rules, dependencies, data flows, domain models, and application relationships from legacy estates.
  • Design modernization strategies including Strangler Fig, Anti-Corruption Layer, event interception, dual-write, and dual-read patterns.
  • Drive migration from legacy platforms toward modern cloud-native architectures.
  • Validate migrated application behavior against legacy systems and identify functional discrepancies.

Modern Cloud-Native Engineering

  • Design and develop modern applications using Java 21 and Spring Boot 3.x.
  • Build RESTful APIs and microservices following scalable cloud-native architecture patterns.
  • Develop and maintain MongoDB schemas, aggregation pipelines, and indexing strategies.
  • Work with Angular/TypeScript, RxJS, and modern UI architectures.
  • Design OpenAPI 3.1 contract-first APIs.
  • Integrate and modernize IBM MQ toward Kafka, Azure Service Bus, or equivalent messaging platforms.
  • Implement distributed systems patterns including circuit breakers, retry/backoff, service mesh, distributed tracing, and structured logging.

Cloud & DevOps

  • Design and deploy cloud-native solutions using AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Work with Docker and Kubernetes for containerized application deployment.
  • Develop and govern Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform and/or Helm.
  • Design CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps.
  • Implement automated quality gates, security scanning, test coverage, and container image scanning.
  • Ensure AI-generated code and infrastructure artifacts pass appropriate engineering and security review processes.

Technical Leadership

  • Lead cross-functional teams covering backend, frontend, data migration, and AI/agent engineering.
  • Own end-to-end solution design and technical architecture for modernization workstreams.
  • Prepare LLDs, sequence diagrams, data-model mappings, migration roadmaps, and API designs.
  • Conduct architecture and code reviews across both manually written and AI-generated code.
  • Establish engineering standards for agent-assisted development.
  • Mentor engineers on Agentic AI, prompt engineering, legacy modernization, and cloud-native development.
  • Work closely with architects, legacy SMEs, domain engineers, cloud teams, and business stakeholders.

Delivery & Stakeholder Management

  • Own technical delivery commitments and sprint-level execution.
  • Break modernization initiatives into measurable engineering deliverables.
  • Track modernization progress, migration coverage, and agent pipeline quality.
  • Identify technical risks including AI hallucination, data consistency, performance gaps, and migration issues.
  • Communicate architecture decisions, technical risks, blockers, and mitigation strategies to stakeholders.

 

Required Skills & Experience

Agentic AI – Must Have

  • Hands-on experience building multi-agent AI systems.
  • Experience with one or more of:
    • Claude Code CLI
    • Cursor
    • Gemini CLI
    • LangChain / LangGraph
    • AutoGen
    • CrewAI
    • Equivalent Agentic AI frameworks
  • Strong understanding of agent orchestration patterns such as:
    • Sequential chains
    • Parallel workflows
    • Supervisor/worker models
    • Reflection/self-critique loops
  • Experience with LLM tool/function calling.
  • Experience with RAG and agent memory strategies.
  • Strong prompt engineering experience.
  • Experience evaluating and validating AI-generated outputs.
  • Knowledge of LLM APIs such as Claude, Gemini, OpenAI GPT, or equivalent.

Legacy Modernization – Must Have

  • 15+ years of software engineering experience with strong technical leadership background.
  • Strong ability to understand and analyze:
    • COBOL
    • CICS
    • IMS
    • DB2
    • JCL
    • IBM MQ
  • Experience with enterprise legacy modernization programs.
  • Strong understanding of modernization patterns including Strangler Fig, Anti-Corruption Layer, event interception, dual-write, and dual-read.

Modern Development – Must Have

  • Deep expertise in Java 21.
  • Strong Spring Boot 3.x experience.
  • Microservices and REST API development.
  • MongoDB and document data modeling.
  • Angular / TypeScript.
  • OpenAPI 3.1.
  • JUnit 5 / Mockito.
  • Experience with IBM MQ and modern messaging technologies such as Kafka or Azure Service Bus.

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • Production experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Terraform and/or Helm.
  • Cloud-native architecture and distributed systems.
  • OpenTelemetry, structured logging, monitoring, and observability.

CI/CD & DevSecOps

  • GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps.
  • Automated testing and quality gates.
  • SonarQube and OWASP dependency scanning.
  • Container security/image scanning.
  • Secure CI/CD and deployment practices.

 

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with enterprise-scale AI-driven application modernization.
  • Experience in financial services, banking, insurance, or other highly regulated environments.
  • Experience designing AI agents specifically for legacy code analysis and migration.
  • Experience with Spring Expression Language (SpEL), Drools, or similar rules engines.
  • Strong experience with event-driven architecture.
  • Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.

 

Education

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline preferred.

 

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

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