Technical Lead – Backend Systems

Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Limited; Chennai; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 5,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Limited is seeking a hands-on Technical Lead – Backend Systems in Chennai to own backend architecture, system design, and engineering standards. You will guide teams in delivering scalable, robust solutions and make architectural decisions beyond coding.

You will lead the design of distributed systems, work with Python/FastAPI, and collaborate with Product and Architecture to translate business needs into solid technical implementations.

Qualifications

• 12+ years backend/software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on production experience with FastAPI.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python.
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL/MySQL and at least one NoSQL database.
• Deep understanding of backend architecture, design patterns, SOLID principles, and DDD concepts.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and scalable application design.
• Proven ability to own architecture and make independent technical decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end backend architecture and technical design.
• Design scalable, resilient, and maintainable systems.
• Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns.
• Evaluate architectural approaches including Microservices, Modular Monoliths, Event-Driven and Hexagonal Architectures.
• Drive critical technology decisions and document architecture through design diagrams, ADRs and technical specifications.
• Architect and develop high-performance backend services using Python and FastAPI.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

Backend architecture

PostgreSQL

MySQL

NoSQL

Distributed systems

DDD & SOLID

Technical leadership

Code reviews

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Kafka

Job description

We're Hiring | Technical Lead – Backend Systems

Location: Chennai, Work from Office

Experience: 12– 15+ Years

Are you a hands‑on backend engineering leader who enjoys solving complex architectural challenges, building scalable systems, and driving engineering excellence?

We are looking for an experienced Technical Lead – Backend Systems to take ownership of backend architecture, system design, and engineering standards.

This is an opportunity for someone who goes beyond writing code — someone who can make sound architectural decisions, build robust distributed systems, and guide engineering teams in delivering high‑quality technology solutions.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

1. Backend Architecture & System Design

• Own end-to-end backend architecture and technical design.
• Design scalable, resilient, and maintainable systems.
• Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns.
• Evaluate architectural approaches including Microservices, Modular Monoliths, Event-Driven and Hexagonal Architectures.
• Drive critical technology decisions and document architecture through design diagrams, ADRs and technical specifications.

2. Hands-on Backend Engineering

• Architect and develop high-performance backend services using Python and FastAPI.
• Build REST APIs, asynchronous services, and background processing workflows.
• Drive clean code practices, SOLID principles, design patterns, and engineering quality.
• Lead code reviews and optimize system performance.

3. Database & Data Architecture

• Design and optimize relational databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL.
• Work with NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB, DynamoDB and Redis.
• Drive database schema design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, and data migrations.
• Make informed data-store decisions based on performance, consistency, and scalability requirements.

4. Distributed Systems & Scalability

• Design systems that support horizontal scaling and high availability.
• Handle fault tolerance, retries, timeouts, idempotency, and distributed transactions.
• Work with messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ and AWS SQS.
• Understand eventual consistency, replication, and failure-handling strategies.

5. Cloud, DevOps & Engineering Practices

• Work with cloud platforms (AWS / Azure / GCP).
• Drive containerization using Docker and deployment through CI/CD pipelines.
• Understand Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Partner with DevOps/SRE teams on monitoring, logging, tracing, and observability.

6. Technical Leadership

• Act as the technical owner for backend engineering systems.
• Mentor and guide senior and mid-level engineers.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural guidelines, and best practices.
• Collaborate with Product, Architecture, and Business teams to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions.

What We’re Looking For

Must-Have Skills

• 12+ years of backend/software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of hands‑on production experience with FastAPI.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python.
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL/MySQL and at least one NoSQL database.
• Deep understanding of backend architecture, design patterns, SOLID principles, and DDD concepts.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and scalable application design.
• Proven ability to own architecture and make independent technical decisions.

Good to Have

• Experience architecting and evolving large-scale enterprise systems.
• Experience with monolith-to-microservices transformations.
• Hands‑on exposure to event-driven and streaming architectures.
• Strong understanding of API gateways, rate limiting, OAuth2 and JWT.
• Experience with cloud-native deployments and Kubernetes.
• Previous experience as a Senior Backend Engineer, Technical Lead, or Solution Architect.

Who Would Be a Great Fit?

• Is still passionate about writing and reviewing code.
• Thinks architecturally but understands implementation-level details.
• Can balance scalability, performance, cost, and engineering complexity.
• Takes ownership of technology decisions rather than simply following specifications.
• Can influence engineering teams through technical depth and leadership.