Lead Software Engineer

Razorpay; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Razorpay in Bengaluru seeks a Lead Software Development Engineer to drive architecture, design thinking, and high-impact delivery across global payments. You will mentor peers, own critical codebases end-to-end, and shape Razorpay's tech culture while ensuring scalable, production-grade systems with strong data integrity and security considerations.

You will lead AI-augmented workflows and define robust testing strategies across unit, integration, and resilience scenarios.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software experience.
• Expert in at least one backend language (Go/Java/Python).
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, storage, caching, and event-driven architectures.
• Resiliency patterns and failure-modes knowledge.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted workflows and guided promptable tasks.
• Understanding of web architectures, HTTP, and REST conventions.
• Ability to challenge status quo and iterate at scale.
• Curiosity to learn new technologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and design thinking from concept to implementation.
• Drive product and API strategy for developers worldwide.
• Mentor peers, defend architectural decisions, and communicate trade-offs.
• Ensure high-quality, maintainable code with rigorous validation.
• Establish robust testing across units, integrations, and resilience scenarios.

Skills

Backend languages

Distributed systems

REST APIs

System resiliency

Agentic workflows

HTTP & Web

Code quality

Leadership mentorship

Job description

A Lead Software Development Engineer (Lead SDE) at Razorpay is a well-grounded, innovative, quality-focused product thinker and business-conscious engineer - not a mere coder. Armed with deep technical context and extensive experience, you will build production-grade, highly scalable software and see nuances and edge cases that others might overlook.

At our scale, engineering creates a massive impact across global digital payments. Beyond technical excellence, you are expected to operate with a strong ownership mindset in ambiguous environments, act as a technical leader, mentor peers, and actively influence and shape Razorpay's culture in the right way.

What you will build:

• Architecture & Design Thinking: Drive ambiguous requirements into clean, low-level designs (LLD) with clear interfaces, data flows, and non-functional requirements (NFRs) before execution.
• Engineering Leadership & AI Augmentation: Act as the "tech lead of an AI agent loop". Lead development by utilizing AI-augmented workflows and engineering assistants strategically handling prompt decomposition, constraint management, and rigorous code validation.
• Scalable Systems Delivery: Build full-fledged applications and payment infrastructure from scratch, driving features to completion. Transition systems seamlessly across complex architectural scales.
• Code Quality & Integrity: Maintain high-quality implementation standards with clean abstractions, SOLID principles, and modular, maintainable code. Take full ownership of all code codebases, performing independent navigation, debugging, and strict verification without AI assistance when required.
• Product & API Strategy: Actively participate in and drive product and design discussions. Shape our public-facing REST APIs for developers worldwide and brainstorm new directions to make online payments easy and accessible.
• Robust Testing & Resilience: Implement comprehensive verification strategies including unit, integration, adversarial, and known-risk testing to ensure error-free functionality under multi-limit and distributed failure modes.
• Collaboration & Mentorship: Mentorship of engineering peers, clearly articulating technical trade-offs, defending architectural decisions, and engaging in constructive discussions across teams to prioritise end-user value.

What we are looking for:

• 5+ years of experience in professional software technology, preferably within a fast-paced product company.
• Expert working knowledge and deep fluency in at least one backend programming language (e.g., GoLang, Java, Python).
• Strong grasp of both High-Level Design and Low-Level Design. Proven understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, data storage trade-offs caching, and event-driven architectures.
• Resiliency Patterns: Solid understanding of system failure modes and modern mitigation patterns.
• Familiarity with Agentic Workflows. Ability to break complex engineering problems down into structured, promptable tasks while maintaining complete accountability for code safety, security gaps, and hallucination detection.
• Understanding of web architectures, HTTP protocols, and REST API conventions.
• Demonstrated ability to challenge the status quo, evaluate complex technical trade-offs rationally, and display immense agility when iterating on products at scale.
• A strong willingness to learn and unlearn new technologies to deliver the best possible product outcome.