Principal Software Engineer, Backend

Overview

As a Principal Software Engineer, Backend on the Platform & Cloud Services team, you will serve as a technical cornerstone and architect-level individual contributor. You will drive architecture, design, implementation, technical strategy, quality, scalability, security, and mentoring across critical backend platform features and services.

What you'll do

• Lead the design and architecture of complex, large-scale, and distributed backend systems.
• Take ownership of critical architecture decisions, design patterns, and infrastructure choices.
• Define and steer technical strategy for major components and product features with engineering leadership, product managers, and key stakeholders.
• Own and lead implementation of large-scale features from initial design and prototyping through testing and deployment.
• Solve challenging technical problems hands-on.
• Drive a culture of high quality and continuous improvement through rigorous code and design reviews.
• Champion clean code, scalable design, and DevOps maturity.
• Act as a technical advisor and mentor to senior, mid-level, and junior engineers.
• Promote best practices and elevate the technical skills of the team.
• Define component test scenarios and drive API test automation.
• Ensure high code coverage and implement and enforce security best practices throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Identify performance bottlenecks and lead initiatives to optimize system performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Evaluate and recommend emerging tools, technologies, and frameworks.

What you'll need

• 16+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on backend development and the architecture of distributed systems.
• A proven track record of technical leadership, including owning the design of major features, mentoring engineers, people management and successfully driving engineering-wide initiatives.
• Extensive experience with microservices architecture.
• Experience with API design using REST and gRPC.
• Experience with API documentation using Swagger/OpenAPI.
• Strong expertise in scalable data stores, including SQL and NoSQL.
• Strong expertise in caching systems, including Redis and Memcached.
• Strong expertise in message queues, including Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Pub/Sub.
• Deep proficiency in one or more programming languages, such as Java, Go, or Python.
• Solid understanding of cloud environments, including AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Hands-on experience with containerization using Docker.
• Hands-on experience with orchestration using Kubernetes.
• Hands-on experience building robust CI/CD pipelines, such as Jenkins or GitLab CI.
• Strong knowledge of engineering best practices, including automated testing frameworks such as JUnit or TestNG.
• Experience with observability tools for monitoring, logging, and tracing, such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, or OpenTelemetry.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to work cross-functionally and influence decisions through technical expertise.
• Active habits using AI tools daily to amplify output and a track record of folding new ones into your workflow quickly.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Telecommunications domain experience.
• A good understanding of 3GPP specifications related to EPC and 5G Core.

Details

• Location: Bangalore, India.
• Onsite 3 days a week in office.