Lead Software Engineer - Backend

📋 Description • Architect & deliver the next-generation platform backbone that powers millions of customer interactions every day. You will own the end-to-end lifecycle of distributed services that must respond in milliseconds, remain resilient under unpredictable traffic spikes, and scale horizontally across multiple geographies. • Lead a high-performing backend squad (4-8 engineers) through the full SDLC—from ideation and design to deployment and post-production tuning. You will set technical direction, enforce engineering best practices, and foster a culture of continuous learning and psychological safety. • Translate complex product requirements into elegant, low-latency, cost-efficient solutions. You will balance feature velocity with system reliability, ensuring that every line of code contributes to a platform that is always available and economically sustainable. • Champion the adoption of open-source distributed systems (Kafka, Cassandra, Kubernetes, Envoy, etc.) and evaluate emerging technologies to keep Freshworks at the cutting edge. You will run proof-of-concepts, publish internal tech notes, and socialize findings across product teams. • Define measurable quality attributes—latency p99 < 50 ms, availability > 99.95 %, cost per transaction < $0.001—and instrument the platform to track them in real time. You will create dashboards, alerts, and chaos-engineering experiments to validate that targets are met or exceeded. • Collaborate with cross-functional architects, frontend engineers, SREs, and product managers to design APIs and data contracts that are intuitive, version-tolerant, and secure. You will run architecture review forums and ensure that every integration point is documented and stress-tested. • Build green-field services from scratch when existing solutions fall short. You will write clean, idiomatic code (Java/Kotlin/Go), craft exhaustive unit and integration tests, and automate deployment via GitOps pipelines to achieve true continuous delivery. • Mentor engineers at all levels through pair programming, design clinics, and career-growth plans. You will conduct rigorous yet empathetic code reviews, emphasizing readability, testability, and adherence to SOLID principles. • Drive compliance with Freshworks’ security, privacy, and data-residency mandates. You will embed security scanning into CI/CD, perform threat-modeling sessions, and ensure that every microservice meets SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls. • Evangelize engineering excellence beyond your squad. You will speak at internal guilds, author engineering blogs, and represent Freshworks at meetups and conferences, positioning us as thought leaders in distributed-systems design. • Own on-call rotations and incident response for your services. You will lead blameless post-mortems, translate lessons learned into concrete backlog items, and continuously raise the bar for reliability and observability. • Optimize cloud spend by rightsizing resources, leveraging spot instances, and implementing intelligent caching layers. You will partner with FinOps to forecast growth and negotiate reserved-capacity discounts that save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.