Lead Software Engineer

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Experience: 5+ yrs

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Job Type: Full-time

As a Team Lead - Engineering, you will own the technical execution of your team's modules while remaining actively involved in development. You will personally contribute to features, modules, architecture, and critical fixes while guiding engineers through design decisions, code reviews, troubleshooting, and delivery.

You will work closely with Product, Design, and cross-functional engineering teams to translate requirements into clear technical plans and deliver scalable features on a live SaaS platform. The role also involves managing direct reports, conducting performance reviews, supporting career development, hiring engineers, and building a strong engineering culture.

You will have the opportunity to work on complex data, analytics, scalability, real-time systems, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS engineering challenges, while leveraging modern AI-powered coding tools to improve individual and team productivity.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Personally own and deliver a meaningful share of hands-on development, including features, modules, enhancements, and critical production fixes.
• Own architecture and technical design decisions for the team's modules, balancing scalability, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Develop and maintain applications using technologies including Node.js, ReactJS/NextJS, PHP, MongoDB, MySQL, and WebSockets.
• Break down complex requirements and epics into clear, technically feasible implementation plans.
• Conduct code reviews and enforce clean code, SOLID principles, coding standards, and engineering best practices.
• Identify and resolve complex technical, data, performance, and system-design challenges.
• Monitor production health, including uptime, performance, errors, and reliability, and drive resolution of critical issues.
• Establish and enforce appropriate security, infrastructure, deployment, and operational best practices.
• Contribute to system optimisation and scalability initiatives for high-volume SaaS applications.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, QA, and engineering stakeholders to ensure high-quality and timely delivery.

Team Leadership & People Management

• Manage a team of engineers as direct reports, including 1:1s, performance reviews, appraisals, and career development conversations.
• Mentor engineers through regular feedback, technical guidance, pairing, and knowledge sharing.
• Identify individual development areas and create opportunities for engineers to grow technically and professionally.
• Lead sprint planning, execution, prioritisation, and delivery for the engineering team.
• Break down epics into well-scoped tasks and delegate effectively based on team capabilities and priorities.
• Own hiring, technical evaluation, onboarding, and ramp-up of new engineering team members.
• Communicate project progress, technical risks, dependencies, and blockers to engineering leadership.
• Promote a culture of ownership, collaboration, accountability, quality, and continuous improvement.

What Makes You a Great Fit

• 5+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 2+ years of experience leading engineers as direct reports.
• Strong hands-on development experience with Node.js, ReactJS/NextJS, PHP, MongoDB, MySQL, and WebSockets.
• Proven ability to remain hands-on while simultaneously managing a team and driving technical direction.
• Strong understanding of system design, architecture, scalability, performance optimisation, and maintainable software development.
• Experience building and supporting high-scale SaaS products, analytics platforms, or complex data-driven applications.
• Strong understanding of clean code, SOLID principles, design patterns, testing, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
• Experience working with AWS or comparable cloud platforms, including infrastructure and security best practices.
• Strong troubleshooting and production-debugging skills with experience handling critical application issues.
• Comfortable using AI-powered development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar tools to improve engineering productivity.
• Proven experience conducting performance reviews, appraisals, 1:1s, mentoring, and career-development discussions.
• Ability to convert ambiguous business requirements into clear technical solutions, development plans, and actionable tasks.
• Strong delegation, prioritisation, sprint planning, and delivery-management skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management abilities.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup/SaaS environment with changing priorities and high ownership.
• Strong analytical mindset and passion for solving complex technical and scalability challenges.