Principle Software Engineer - UI

Keka Inc.; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Keka Inc. in Hyderabad, India, seeks a Principal-level frontend architect to set the technical direction across products. You will own architecture, performance, reliability, and the quality bar, guiding standards and reference implementations.

This leadership role emphasizes influence over authority. You will partner with Product, Design, QE, and backend teams to shape API contracts and frontend delivery strategies while mentoring senior engineers and defining secure, scalable frontend

Qualifications

• 13+ years in frontend and web engineering with principal/staff-level impact across multiple teams.
• Proven track record designing large-scale UI systems and incremental migrations.
• Strong frontend performance profiling, observability, and WCAG accessibility.
• Excellent technical communication and influence without authority.

Responsibilities

• Own large-scale frontend architecture and system design across multiple products.
• Define strategy for micro-frontends and monorepos with clear boundaries and versioning.
• Architect the design system for web and mobile with theming and versioning.
• Set state-management strategy and responsive design standards across products.
• Author RFCs for frontend decisions and drive cross-team consensus.
• Own release planning, feature flags, and canary rollouts.
• Lead frontend performance with bundle analysis, budgets, and memory profiling.
• Define frontend security practices (OIDC/OAuth, SSO, CSP, XSS/CSRF).
• Oversee CI/CD, deployment strategy, observability, and debugging across products.
• Mentor senior/lead engineers and shape frontend hiring standards.
• Maintain familiarity with backend API design to influence contracts.

Skills

Frontend architecture

System design

Performance profiling

Technical leadership

RFCs and design docs

Influence without authority

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS

Tools

REST APIs

GraphQL

CDN

Job description

This is a Principal-level, platform-scope role. You'll set the frontend technical direction across our products, owning architecture, performance, reliability, and the quality bar. Much of the impact comes through influence: clear standards, strong reference implementations, and architecture decisions other teams build within. This is a technical leadership role, and people management is not the primary focus.

You'll partner closely with Product, Design, QE, and backend and platform teams.

What you'll do

• Own large-scale frontend architecture and system design across multiple products, defining the target-state architecture and a realistic path to it.
• Set the strategy for micro-frontends and monorepos, including module boundaries, shared dependencies, build orchestration, and versioning.
• Architect the design system across web and mobile, covering token architecture, component contracts, theming, adoption, and versioning.
• Define state management strategy and the criteria for choosing the right approach per use case, and set responsive design standards applied consistently across products.
• Author RFCs for org-level frontend decisions with clear trade-off analysis, and drive consensus across teams.
• Own release planning and rollback strategy, including feature flags, staged and canary rollouts, and rollback-by-design.
• Own frontend performance through bundle analysis, optimization, performance budgets, and memory profiling.
• Set frontend security best practices, including secure auth and token handling (OIDC/OAuth, SSO), CSP, and XSS and CSRF prevention.
• Own CI/CD and deployment strategy for frontend, along with observability, monitoring, and debugging across products.
• Mentor senior and lead engineers through design and code reviews, and help shape the frontend hiring bar.
• Maintain enough familiarity with backend architecture and API design to shape API contracts and collaborate effectively across teams.

Required

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 13+ years in frontend and web engineering, including demonstrated Principal or Staff-level scope with impact across multiple teams.
• Proven track record designing large-scale UI systems and running incremental migrations using approaches such as dual-running, codemods, and compatibility layers.
• Strong command of frontend performance profiling, observability, and accessibility (WCAG).
• Excellent technical communication (RFCs, design docs) and a track record of influence without authority.

Preferred

• B2B SaaS experience with multi-tenant UI, RBAC, feature entitlements, and admin workflows.
• Experience defining and rolling out a design system across web and mobile.
• Familiarity with REST and GraphQL, client caching, and CDN or edge delivery.