Senior Engineering Manager

Forward Biz; Chennai District; On-site; INR 4,500,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Forward Biz seeks a senior engineering leader to drive hands-on technical execution, architecture decisions, and deliver scalable platforms in a fast-moving environment.

You will guide cross-functional teams, mentor engineers, and partner with product and clients to translate business needs into robust technical solutions. A strong communicator and deep cloud/CI/CD expertise are essential for success.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 3–5 years in engineering leadership or equivalent.
• Clear, decisive communicator with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and architecture discussions guiding tradeoffs and implementation choices.
• Drive delivery, reliability, observability, and on-call practices.
• Act as client-facing technical leader coordinating APIs, data flows, and integrations.
• Shape platform architecture, modernization, and security/compliance readiness.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

System design

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

Tools

Node.js

React

CI/CD

Job description

1. Lead by Example Hands-on Technical Execution

• Be deeply involved in design and architecture discussions; guide the team through tradeoffs and implementation choices.
• Be extremely AI-first in how Engineering gets done today
• Review code for critical projects, mentor engineers on system design, and unblock complex technical challenges.
• Set and enforce standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and release readiness.
• Lead postmortems for issues and ensure lasting fixes, not just patches.

2. Drive Delivery and Reliability

• Own the execution and delivery of product initiatives across timelines, quality, and scalability.
• Partner with Product to translate business priorities into actionable engineering plans.
• Strengthen observability, alerting, and on-call practices to support high availability.
• Lead incident response efforts and institutionalize root-cause learning.

3. Client-Facing Technical Leadership

• Serve as the technical point of contact for clients, working directly with both their Engineering/IT teams and business stakeholders.
• Lead integrations end-to-end (APIs, data flows, SSO, third-party systems), from scoping to delivery.
• Co-build solutions with clients, translating business requirements into technical design and back.
• Represent the company's credibility in technical discussions, balancing client asks against product direction and engineering constraints.

4. Shape the Platform and Architecture

• Partner with the Head of Engineering on architecture, refactoring, and modernization.
• Guide system evolution for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Oversee CI/CD, deployment speed, and developer productivity.
• Ensure security and compliance readiness (e.g., SOC2) through sound engineering practices.

5. Build and Scale the Engineering Team

• Help hire, onboard, and mentor engineers, tech leads, and QA specialists across backend, mobile, and DevOps.
• Foster a culture of accountability, curiosity, and shared ownership.
• Coach engineers on problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making.
• Represent Engineering in cross-functional planning and leadership discussions.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, including 3 to 5 years in engineering leadership.
• Clear, decisive communicator who can work with both technical and non-technical stakeholders - this is an absolute deal-breaker
• Strong coding and system design fundamentals; comfortable reviewing and discussing code across modern stacks (Node.js, React, etc.).
• Proven success in building and scaling platforms at serious scale.
• Experience leading multiple teams or squads with structured processes and accountability.
• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and performance optimization.