Senior Lead - Application Development (AePS, IMPS & NETC)

NPCI is evolving the National Electronic Toll Collection

(NETC) FASTag ecosystem into a next-generation, real-time, intelligent, and

scalable national tolling and mobility platform.

This role is responsible for architecting, building, and

scaling stream-processing and platform capabilities that operate at national

scale across toll plazas, acquirer and issuer banks, and concessionaires -

handling mission-critical financial transactions and meeting stringent

regulatory, audit, and resilience standards mandated by NPCI, NHAI/IHMCL, and

RBI.

The role combines: Low-latency Java-based stream processing

for toll transactions Production-grade distributed systems for tag, vehicle,

and transaction processing Fraud, image (ANPR/VRN), and decision intelligence

(rules-driven, with AI/ML as an added advantage) Platform-level engineering

excellence.

This is a strategic engineering role (not a pure research or

support role). Strategic Outcomes Expected - The individual will directly

contribute to: Increased straight-through processing (STP) for FASTag toll

transactions Reduced manual intervention, charge-back disputes, and exception

handling Early and accurate identification of tag cloning, blacklisted tags,

VRN/TID mismatches, and fraud rings Improved transaction turnaround time (TAT),

settlement accuracy, and system throughput at peak plaza volumes Long-term IP

ownership of core platform capabilities within NPCI for the NETC ecosystem

Key Responsibilities

1. Real-Time Stream Processing Architecture (Java-Centric)

Design and implement event-driven, stream-processing pipelines for NETC FASTag

transaction, mapper, and settlement workflows Build low-latency,

high-throughput systems using Java-based streaming frameworks such as Apache

Kafka / Kafka Streams, Apache Flink, or Spark Structured Streaming Ensure

exactly-once processing, idempotency, and fault tolerance across

acquirer-NPCI-issuer hops Handle large-scale streams of toll read events, ANPR

images, tag metadata, and clearing/settlement files with predictable latency

2. Decision Intelligence & Exception Handling Design and

build rules-driven and data-driven decisioning components for: ANPR / Vehicle

Registration Number (VRN) validation against tag-vehicle mapping Tag class /

vehicle class mismatch detection Fraud and anomaly detection (tag cloning,

duplicate reads, ghost transactions, plaza-level anomalies) Intelligent

exception and dispute prioritization for charge-back (CCH) and dispute

management workflows Collaborate with data science / analytics teams to operationalize

models where applicable, ensuring smooth integration into the streaming

platform

3. Adoption of Emerging Technology Trends (Applied, Not

Experimental) Hybrid decisioning (Rules + Analytics + optional ML/GenAI) for

transparent toll decisioning and dispute adjudication Explainability and

traceability to support charge-back resolution, member bank queries, and

regulatory audits Adaptive rule engines that evolve with new fraud patterns,

plaza layouts, and vehicle classes Lightweight Generative AI use cases

(exploratory) - assisted dispute summaries, root-cause explanations, smart

analyst support Governance frameworks for ethical, compliant usage of any

automation aligned with NPCI and RBI expectations Emphasis is on controlled,

auditable, deterministic systems - critical given the multi-party

(acquirer/issuer/concessionaire) settlement nature of NETC.

4. Platform Integration & Reliability Engineering

Integrate streaming and decisioning components into NETC core switching,

mapper, clearing, and settlement systems Design for high availability,

resilience, and disaster recovery across active-active data centres Optimize

performance under peak national toll volumes (festival/holiday surges, 24×7

plaza operations) Ensure observability (metrics, logs, traces) for NPCI ops,

member banks, and plaza operators

5. Security, Compliance & Audit Readiness Ensure

solutions comply with RBI, NHAI / IHMCL, MoRTH regulatory expectations and NPCI

security and data governance standards Build explainability, traceability, and

audit hooks into automated transaction and fraud decisions Support internal,

external, and regulator audits with clear technical documentation and decision

trails

6. Technical Leadership & IP Ownership Act as a

technical authority for stream processing and platform engineering within the

NETC FASTag platform Mentor junior engineers and drive engineering best

practices across the NETC pod Evaluate and govern vendor / OEM solutions (ANPR

engines, fraud tools) without creating dependency Ensure core architecture and

platform knowledge remains within NPCI.

Required Qualifications & Experience

10-15+ years of experience in enterprise-grade,

mission-critical system development Proven track record of architecting and

delivering high-volume, low-latency, distributed systems in payments,

switching, banking, or tolling/mobility domains.

Demonstrated experience leading platform-level engineering

initiatives end-to-end (design → production → scale).

Required Technical Skills Programming & Frameworks

Programming & Frameworks

• Java (Java 11/17+) with strong understanding of:
  • JVM Internals
  • Garbage Collection (GC) Tuning
  • Multithreading & Concurrency
• Spring Ecosystem:
  • Spring Boot
  • Spring Cloud
  • Spring WebFlux (Reactive Programming)
• Reactive & Asynchronous Programming:
  • Project Reactor
  • RxJava
• API Development:
  • RESTful APIs
  • gRPC
  • Protocol Buffers
  • JSON/Avro Serialization

Stream Processing & Messaging

• Apache Kafka
  • Kafka Streams
  • KRaft Mode
  • Schema Registry
• Apache Flink and/or Spark Structured Streaming
• Event-Driven Architecture
• CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation)
• Event Sourcing
• Stateful Stream Processing
• Exactly-Once Processing Semantics
• Idempotency
• Back-Pressure Handling

Data & Storage

• NoSQL Databases:
  • Cassandra
  • Redis
  • Couchbase
  • Equivalent large-scale NoSQL platforms
• Strong SQL expertise in:
  • PostgreSQL
  • Oracle
• Database Optimization:
  • Partitioning
  • Sharding
  • Indexing Strategies
• Data Modeling for:
  • High-Write Systems
  • Low-Latency OLTP Workloads
• Object Storage:
  • Amazon S3
  • MinIO
• Image and File Archival Solutions

Distributed Systems & Architecture

• Microservices Architecture
• Service Mesh Technologies:
  • Istio
  • Linkerd
• API Gateway Implementations
• Distributed Systems Concepts:
  • CAP Theorem
  • Consensus Algorithms (Raft/Paxos)
  • Distributed Transactions
  • Saga Patterns
• High Availability & Disaster Recovery:
  • Active-Active Deployments
  • Multi-Data Center Architectures
• Performance Engineering:
  • Capacity Planning
  • Load Testing
  • TPS Optimization at National Scale

DevOps, Cloud-Native & Observability

• Containerization & Orchestration:
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
• Linux System Administration
• CI/CD Tools:
  • Jenkins
  • GitLab CI
  • Azure DevOps
• Source Control & Git Workflows
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
• Monitoring & Observability:
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • ELK Stack / OpenSearch
  • Jaeger
  • OpenTelemetry

Security & Compliance

• Security Protocols:
  • TLS / mTLS
  • HSM Integration
  • Key Management
  • Tokenization
• Secure Coding:
  • OWASP Standards
  • Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation
• Regulatory & Compliance Knowledge:
  • PCI-DSS
  • RBI Cybersecurity Guidelines
  • Audit Trail Design

Good-to-Have Skills (Preferred)

Rules & Decision Engines

• Drools
• Easy Rules
• Equivalent Decision Orchestration Frameworks

AI/ML & Productionization

• Python-based ML Frameworks:
  • Scikit-learn
  • PyTorch
  • TensorFlow
• ONNX
• MLflow

Computer Vision & OCR

• OpenCV
• Tesseract OCR
• Commercial ANPR SDKs
• Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Technologies

MLOps

• Kubeflow
• MLflow
• Model Versioning
• Model Drift Detection

GenAI & LLM Integration

• LangChain
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Prompt Engineering

Domain Expertise

• NETC / FASTag Ecosystem
• NHAI / IHMCL Systems
• RFID Technologies
• IoT-Based Platforms
• Payments Switching
• ISO 8583
• ISO 20022 Standards