Lead Software Engineer - Backend

Pocket FM; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,600,000 - 4,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Pocket FM in Bengaluru, India is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to own delivery and technical outcomes for a POD spanning Backend and Frontend. You will collaborate with Product, Design, QA and Data teams to deliver scalable features with high quality, reliability and maintainable systems.

The role requires strong system design, hands-on depth with Python or Golang and familiarity with modern Frontend frameworks like React. You will lead a team, drive execution and ensure platform health.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of experience building and delivering production software systems.
• Prior experience leading a small team or POD with accountability for delivery and technical outcomes.
• Strong hands on experience with Backend technologies such as Python or Golang and familiarity with modern Frontend frameworks such as React or similar.
• Solid understanding of system design, APIs, data stores, cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Experience operating in a scaled engineering environment with multiple teams and shared dependencies.
• Demonstrated ability to drive execution through influence rather than formal authority.
• Strong communication skills to explain technical tradeoffs to both technical and non technical stakeholders.
• Ability to manage ambiguity, prioritise effectively and operate with a high level of ownership.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Product and Design teams to understand requirements, user flows and success metrics.
• Lead technical discovery, scope finalisation and solution design across Backend and Frontend components.
• Own end to end execution for the assigned POD, including planning, estimation, dependency management and delivery tracking.
• Proactively align scope, timelines and dependencies across engineering, QA and data teams.
• Own system design and architectural decisions for features spanning APIs, services and user facing applications.
• Act as the primary technical authority for the POD, balancing near term delivery with long term platform health.
• Ensure consistent engineering standards, design principles and coding practices across Backend and Frontend work.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance and unblock teams during complex implementation or integration challenges.
• Participate in hiring through technical interviews and candidate evaluation.
• Track delivery progress against milestones and communicate risks with mitigation plans.
• Partner with QA to ensure release readiness and quality gates are met.
• Support post release monitoring, performance analysis and iterative improvements.
• Drive predictable delivery by breaking down work, assigning ownership, tracking progress and course correcting when needed within the team.
• Lead incident response for production issues, coordinating across engineering, product and operations teams.
• Drive root cause analysis, corrective actions and long term preventive measures.
• Identify recurring failure patterns and champion reliability, observability and operational improvements.
• Mentor engineers through design discussions, code reviews and ongoing technical feedback.
• Raise the overall technical bar of the POD by promoting strong engineering practices and ownership mindset.
• Partner with the Engineering Manager by providing input on performance trends, growth areas and team health.

Skills

Python

Golang

React

System design

Leadership

Distributed systems

Cloud (AWS)

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

REST

Microservices

Kafka

RabbitMQ

AWS

Job description

It is an important phase in Pocket FM’s journey as we continue to shape the future of audio entertainment across India, US and global markets. We are building a large scale audio OTT platform spanning audio series, audiobooks and podcasts through a differentiated storytelling format. Our mission is to give voice to stories and wisdom.

Pocket FM serves over 150 million MAL (monthly active listeners), with users spending more than 100 minutes per day on average. The platform streams over 3 billion minutes of audio every month. We are a Series C funded company backed by marquee investors like Naver, Goodwater Capital, Lightspeed, Tanglin Venture Partners and others.

About the role:

The Lead Software Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for owning delivery and technical outcomes for a defined engineering POD. The role spans Backend and Frontend systems and partners closely with Product, Design, QA and Data teams to deliver scalable, reliable and high quality product features.

This role requires strong system design skills, hands-on technical depth and the ability to align multiple stakeholders toward predictable delivery outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Product and Delivery Ownership

• Collaborate with Product and Design teams to understand requirements, user flows and success metrics.
• Lead technical discovery, scope finalisation and solution design across Backend and Frontend components.
• Own end to end execution for the assigned POD, including planning, estimation, dependency management and delivery tracking.
• Proactively align scope, timelines and dependencies across engineering, QA and data teams.

Technical Leadership

• Own system design and architectural decisions for features spanning APIs, services and user facing applications.
• Act as the primary technical authority for the POD, balancing near term delivery with long term platform health.
• Ensure consistent engineering standards, design principles and coding practices across Backend and Frontend work.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance and unblock teams during complex implementation or integration challenges.
• Participate in hiring through technical interviews and candidate evaluation.

Delivery and Execution

• Track delivery progress against agreed milestones and communicate risks early with mitigation plans.
• Partner with QA to ensure release readiness and quality gates are met.
• Support post release monitoring, performance analysis and iterative improvements based on production signals.
• Drive predictable delivery by breaking down work, assigning ownership, tracking progress and course correcting when needed within the team.

Reliability and Incident Management

• Lead incident response for production issues, coordinating across engineering, product and operations teams.
• Drive root cause analysis, corrective actions and long term preventive measures.
• Identify recurring failure patterns and champion reliability, observability and operational improvements.

Mentorship and Team Development

• Mentor engineers through design discussions, code reviews and ongoing technical feedback.
• Raise the overall technical bar of the POD by promoting strong engineering practices and ownership mindset.
• Partner with the Engineering Manager by providing input on performance trends, growth areas and team health.

What You Will Need for this Position:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of experience building and delivering production software systems.
• Prior experience leading a small team or POD with accountability for delivery and technical outcomes.
• Strong hands on experience with Backend technologies such as Python or Golang and familiarity with modern Frontend frameworks such as React or similar.
• Solid understanding of system design, APIs, data stores, cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Experience operating in a scaled engineering environment with multiple teams and shared dependencies.
• Demonstrated ability to drive execution through influence rather than formal authority.
• Strong communication skills to explain technical tradeoffs to both technical and non technical stakeholders.
• Ability to manage ambiguity, prioritise effectively and operate with a high level of ownership.

Bonus Qualities

The following experience or interests will be considered a strong plus:

• Experience with AI assisted development workflows, including the use of tools such as Cursor, Claude Code or similar systems to improve developer productivity and code quality.
• Research oriented mindset toward emerging AI tools, frameworks and techniques, with the ability to evaluate, prototype or build internal tooling, automation or instrumentation where it adds clear engineering value.
• Experience working with content management systems, content pipelines or large scale content platforms.
• Strong understanding of application security, including secure coding practices, data protection, access control and handling sensitive user or content related data.

While this role does not require prior experience with every technology listed below, familiarity with modern Backend and Frontend systems at scale is expected.

• Languages: Python, Golang
• Architecture: Microservices, REST and event driven systems
• Datastores: Relational and NoSQL databases
• Messaging and Streaming: Kafka, RabbitMQ or equivalent
• Infrastructure: Cloud based deployment on AWS or equivalent

Frontend

Platform and Engineering Practices

• Observability, monitoring and alerting systems
• Automated testing and code quality tooling

You can get more updates, insights and everything behind the scenes at Pocket FM here - Pocket FM