Technical Lead

This is a senior IC role with significant architectural ownership and technical leadership expectations. A Seasoned SDE3 / Tech Lead at SpotDraft is expected to own and evolve critical systems end-to-end, influence technical direction across teams, and drive high-quality engineering decisions at a platform level. Beyond building systems, you will shape architecture, mentor engineers, and partner with leadership to guide long-term technical strategy. The role works closely with Engineering Leaders on system evolution and key technical decisions.

Responsibilities:

• Designing and evolving scalable backend systems (HLD + LLD) with clear trade-off articulation.
• Driving architecture decisions across services and influencing platform direction.
• Building and evolving APIs that power core product and platform workflows.
• Identifying opportunities for platform abstraction and reusable frameworks.
• Owning services/modules end-to-end across their lifecycle, including long-term scalability and stability.
• Proactively identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and system limitations.
• Leading and contributing to design reviews with a strong focus on long-term architecture.
• Mentoring engineers and raising the quality bar for system design and code.
• Driving technical debt reduction and platform simplification initiatives.
• Partnering with Staff/Principal Engineers on complex system design and architectural direction.
• Using AI tools pragmatically to improve engineering quality and velocity.
• Ensuring systems are scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable at scale.

Requirements:

• 7-10 years of backend development experience in product environments.
• Strong Python fundamentals (Django/Flask experience is a plus).
• Proven experience designing and evolving distributed or high-scale systems in production.
• Strong system design fundamentals with the ability to drive HLD + LLD independently.
• Demonstrated experience owning systems across multiple iterations (build, scale optimize evolve).
• Ability to reason deeply about performance, reliability, cost, and maintainability trade-offs.
• Experience in influencing cross-team technical decisions and architecture.
• Comfort working directly with stakeholders and driving alignment across functions.