Java Software Engineer (Active SC Clearance Required)

Location: Hybrid (approximately 2 days per month required onsite in London)

Contract Type: Permanent/ or initial 12-Month Fixed Term Contract (FTC)

Employer: Amber Labs – Digital Consultancy

Clearance: Active SC Clearance Required

Start Date: Immediate

About Amber Labs

Amber Labs is a forward-thinking digital consultancy delivering innovative cloud, data, and DevOps solutions across the UK public sector. We specialise in helping organisations achieve digital transformation at pace while maintaining the highest security and governance standards.

We are seeking a Java Engineer to join a delivery team building and enhancing cloud-native backend services within a modern enterprise environment.

Role Overview

The successful candidate will contribute to the design, development, and support of Java-based applications using Spring Boot and AWS, working as part of an Agile, multidisciplinary team.

Alongside strong backend engineering skills, the role requires practical SQL and reporting capability, enabling engineers to interrogate data and support business reporting requirements.

This is a hands-on software engineering role with opportunities to contribute to API development, cloud-native architectures, and modern DevOps practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Java-based backend applications using Spring Boot
• Design and implement secure RESTful APIs
• Build and support cloud-native applications hosted on AWS
• Develop SQL queries to support reporting, troubleshooting, and data analysis
• Collaborate with technical teams to deliver scalable and maintainable software solutions
• Participate in code reviews, testing, and continuous improvement activities
• Contribute to Agile ceremonies and engineering best practices
• Troubleshoot and resolve application and integration issues

Essential Skills & Experience

Java & Spring Boot (Non-Negotiable)

• Strong commercial experience developing enterprise applications using Java
• Proven hands-on experience with Spring Boot
• Strong understanding of:
• Object-oriented design principles / RESTful API development
• Dependency Injection (IoC) / Spring MVC
• Exception handling and validation / Secure application development
• Experience delivering maintainable, well-tested backend services using modern engineering practices

AWS Cloud Experience (Non-Negotiable)

• Practical experience developing and deploying applications within Amazon Web Services
• Understanding of cloud-native application development and deployment
• Experience with AWS services relevant to application development, such as: EC2 / Lambda / S3 / IAM / API Gateway / RDS
• Awareness of cloud security, monitoring, and operational best practices

Government Cloud Experience

• Experience working within Enterprise Business Services Architecture (EBSA) or similar enterprise cloud architecture frameworks is highly desirable , where applicable to government delivery.

SQL & Report Writing (Essential)

• Strong SQL skills with experience querying relational databases
• Ability to:
• Write efficient SQL queries
• Analyse and validate data
• Produce reports from structured datasets
• Experience supporting business reporting and data analysis within enterprise systems

Desirable Skills - Frontend Technologies

Experience with modern frontend frameworks such as:

• React and Next.js

These are desirable but not essential and should be viewed as an advantage rather than a requirement.

Architecture & Modern Engineering Practices

Experience with:

• API design and development
• Microservices architecture
• Event-driven systems
• Distributed applications

Understanding of architectural patterns and scalable software design principles.

Apply Now and help shape the future of UK digital services with Amber Labs.