Lead Java Engineer with AI tools (Relocation to Qatar)

We are seeking aLead Java Engineer with AI tools to join our team, with eventual relocation to Qatar. EPAM is renowned for delivering cutting-edge technological solutions to transform businesses worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to pragmatic AI architectures such as RAG, agents, copilots, and automation integrated into cloud-native microservices and enterprise data platforms
• Support decisions on when to apply RAG, agents, or conventional approaches
• Implement and apply spec-driven development specs and templates, and support governance and quality gates
• Build and maintain agentic use cases, run and write agents, and implement guardrails defined by the program
• Deliver production solutions including LLM integrations, retrieval, and embeddings or vector stores embedded into Java and Spring Boot services
• Implement observability, rollout and versioning, and CI/CD for prompts, specs, and models
• Deploy and operate solutions on AKS and Azure hosting with guidance from platform and SRE teams
• Contribute to tracking adoption, productivity, quality, and risk KPIs for AI-enabled delivery
• Participate in playbooks, training, documentation, and team mentoring, and share patterns across squads
• Implement responsible AI controls, data handling constraints, and agent guardrails in line with engineering standards

Requirements

• 5+ years of hands-on development experience in Core Java, Spring/Spring Boot, and microservices
• Understanding of cloud-native architecture, Oracle/PL/SQL database concepts, and Kafka
• Experience with GitLab
• 1–2+ years of hands-on delivery experience with LLMs, RAG, and agentic systems in production or strong pilot/enterprise PoC settings
• Understanding of AI concepts, particularly spec-driven development, along with working knowledge of running and writing agents and implementing guardrails
• Experience with LLM providers and/or self-hosted models, prompt engineering, and an evaluation/testing mindset
• Experience with Azure, including AKS and/or Azure Web Apps, and CI/CD with GitLab (Azure DevOps is a plus)
• Strong communication skills and ability to work in a global team
• Practical experience applying spec-driven ways of working in a team setting
• Hands-on experience building and integrating agentic and/or RAG capabilities into real engineering workflows
• Ability to balance cost, productivity, quality, and risk when implementing LLM/agentic solutions
• Production mindset covering testing, observability, safe rollout, and secure-by-design implementation
• English proficiency at B2 level or higher

Nice to have

• Familiarity with React