Tech Lead - Backend

Keka Technologies Private Limited; Karnataka; On-site; INR 1,500,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Keka Technologies Private Limited is seeking a Tech Lead for their backend team in Karnataka, India. This role involves owning the technical direction of the platform and mentoring Senior Engineers. You will design and build core services while ensuring quality and adhering to best practices.

The ideal candidate has 6–8 years of experience in software development, a solid CS degree, and proficiency in backend languages. Benefits include a dynamic work environment and opportunities for growth.

Qualifications

• 6–8 years of professional experience in software development building production systems.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, OS, and networking.
• Experience with event-driven architectures such as Kafka, NATS, or RabbitMQ.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core platform services that handle complex business logic reliably.
• Mentor Senior Backend Engineers and help them grow.
• Diagnose issues across services using logs, traces, and metrics.

Skills

Software development experience

Backend language proficiency

System design instincts

Quality and accountability

Education

CS degree or equivalent (B.Tech/B.E./B.S.)

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Zenskar is building the operational backbone for how B2B enterprises run their business.

As a Tech Lead on the backend team, you will own the technical direction for a core domain of the platform – the systems where correctness is non‑negotiable, scale is unforgiving, and the edge cases never stop coming while mentoring the Senior Engineers in your pod.

This is a hands‑on role: you’re writing code and designing systems yourself day to day, while pairing on hard problems, reviewing the work of the engineers around you, and being the person who figures out what’s actually broken before it becomes a fire.

You’ll report into the Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering. This is not a feature‑factory role. You are here to raise the level of abstraction the team works at, not to ship tickets faster.

What you’ll own:

• Design and build core platform services that handle complex business logic reliably at scale
• Architect and own integrations with external enterprise systems, each with their own quirks, rate limits, and failure modes
• Build APIs that enterprise engineering teams actually want to integrate with, not just ones that technically work
• Own production debugging end to end: diagnose issues across services using logs, traces, and metrics, and make incidents boring rather than fires
• Embed security and compliance thinking into your systems by default, not as a retrofit
• Mentor the Senior Backend Engineers in your pod: pair on hard problems, review their work, and help them grow as engineers
• Set the architectural direction for your domain: choose the frameworks, patterns, and abstractions the team builds on, and make the calls that shape the platform for years
• Lead design reviews and code reviews, and set the technical standard the rest of the team calibrates against
• Hold a clear bar for quality, follow-through, and ownership across the engineers you work with, and make sure work is healthy in production, not just merged
• Partner with product, implementation, and customer success as the engineer who understands the system deeply enough to push back when requirements are wrong
• Raise the bar for the engineers around you without slowing the team down

The impact you’ll make:

• The systems and frameworks you set up become the foundation the rest of the backend team builds on
• Architectural decisions you make now will define how the platform scales over the next several years
• You will shorten the time from new enterprise requirement to production‑ready system, enabling the company to move faster without breaking things
• You will raise the engineering quality bar for the team through the standards you set, the reviews you run, and the code you ship
• You will work on problems that don’t have obvious solutions and your judgment will determine the outcome

Must have:

• 6–8 years of professional software development experience building production systems at real companies
• CS degree or equivalent (B.Tech/B.E./B.S.), strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, OS, and networking
• Can describe the hard problems they have solved, why they were difficult, and what changed as a result, not just a list of technologies used
• Deep proficiency in at least one backend language; language matters less than depth and engineering judgment
• Strong system design instincts: can reason through tradeoffs, failure modes, and long‑term maintainability under pressure
• Has set technical direction before: defined architecture, frameworks, or standards that other engineers built on, not just owned their own slice
• Has driven quality and accountability across a team, formally

Good to have:

• Hands‑on observability: comfortable diagnosing complex issues across distributed services using logs, traces, and performance metrics, not just setting up dashboards
• Security and compliance awareness (SOC 2, DPDPA, or similar) with a grasp of the engineering implications, not just the checkbox
• Experience with event‑driven architectures: Kafka, NATS, or RabbitMQ in production
• Cloud platform experience (AWS preferred), deploying and operating services at scale
• Early‑stage startup experience: comfortable with ambiguity, evolving requirements, and wearing multiple hats
• Background in multi‑tenant enterprise software: external integrations, enterprise workflows
• Strong testing culture: unit, integration, and e2e as a default, not an afterthought
• Containerization and CI/CD: Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions
• Uses AI coding tools like Cursor or GitHub Copilot to move faster without compromising quality
• Experience with financial systems, billing platforms, or fintech applications
• API design and integration experience

What drives you

• You can go deep on the hard problems you have solved: the why, the tradeoffs, the outcome
• You ask "what happens when this fails?" before shipping anything
• You own problems, not tasks: you follow through until the system is healthy, not just until the PR is merged
• You set direction without taking over: you make the engineers around you better instead of becoming the single point of knowledge
• You have strong opinions on system design but hold them loosely: you change your mind when the evidence does
• You thrive in a fast‑moving environment where the requirements evolve and the answers aren’t always obvious