Senior Lead Engineer - Airtel

Airtel; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 4,200,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Airtel Digital is seeking a Senior Lead Engineer to guide a team building and maintaining high-quality software applications that scale to millions of users in India. You will own backend systems, design scalable microservices, and drive performance and reliability in production.

You will collaborate with product managers and frontend engineers, implement security-by-design, CI/CD, and modern data pipelines.

Qualifications

• Build internet-scale backend services for millions of users.
• Design secure, modular APIs across apps and web.
• Work with event-driven data pipelines and real-time data.
• Ensure fault tolerance, auto-scaling, and high availability.
• Collaborate with product and frontend teams on scalable solutions.
• Write clean, testable code and manage CI/CD pipelines.
• Embed security by design: IAM and encryption.
• Experiment with modern frameworks, AI/ML, streaming, graphs.
• Deliver end-to-end features from design to production.

Responsibilities

• Build internet-scale backend services for millions of users.
• Own secure, modular APIs across app, web, partner channels.
• Distributed data engineering with event-driven systems and real-time pipelines.
• Ensure fault tolerance, auto-scaling, and high availability.
• Collaborate with product managers and frontend engineers on scalable solutions.
• Write clean, testable code and drive DevOps with automated testing and CD.
• Security by design: encryption and IAM in backend systems.
• Innovation at scale: AI/ML, streaming, graph databases.
• End-to-end ownership from design to production and impact.

Skills

Java

Go

Scala

Node.js

Distributed Systems

System Design

SQL

NoSQL

Redis

Kafka

RabbitMQ

CI/CD

Cloud

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Comparable experience

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Redis

CI/CD pipelines

Docker

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

Job description

Senior Lead Engineer - Airtel Digital

About the Role

To contribute and lead a team of enthusiastic individuals to the building and maintenance of high quality software applications and cater superior experience to our customers on a scale.

Responsibilities

1. Build Internet-Scale Systems Design and develop backend services that support millions of daily users with high throughput and low latency.
2. Microservices & APIs Own secure, modular, and reusable APIs that integrate seamlessly across app, web, and partner channels.
3. Distributed Data Engineering Work with event-driven systems, caching strategies, and real-time data pipelines (Kafka, Redis, etc.).
4. Performance & Reliability Ensure fault tolerance, auto-scaling, and five-nines availability through strong observability and incident management.
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with product managers and frontend engineers to design scalable solutions aligned to customer journeys.
6. Code Quality & CI/CD Write clean, testable code, and drive DevOps practices with automated testing and continuous delivery pipelines.
7. Security by Design – Embed encryption, identity access management, and compliance into all backend systems.
8. Innovation at Scale – Experiment with modern frameworks, AI/ML integrations, streaming, and graph databases to push product capabilities forward.
9. End-to-End Ownership – Deliver features from design to production rollout, measuring real customer and business impact.

Skills & Experience

• Strong coding skills in Java, Go, Scala, or Node.js with solid understanding of object oriented and functional programming.
• Experience with distributed systems, high-volume APIs, and real-time data pipelines.
• Hands-on with databases (SQL + NoSQL), caching layers (Redis/Memcached), and messaging queues (Kafka/RabbitMQ).
• Strong grasp of system design, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Mindset of ownership, problem-solving, and impact delivery rather than just coding tasks.

Why Airtel Digital?

• Build systems that millions use daily — your code is never invisible.
• Work with cutting-edge cloud and AI tech in real business scenarios.
• Join a fast, metrics-driven team where engineers influence product strategy.

Educational Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computers Engineering or comparable experience.