About the role:
Our team is looking for a hands-on Tech Lead to own the technical direction of our backend platform. You will design and build scalable services, guide a team of engineers, and take end-to-end ownership from architecture through deployment and operations. This is a player-coach role: you will still write code every day while setting the technical bar for the team
What we're looking for
Must have:
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, primarily on backend systems.
- Strong hands-on expertise in Node.js (TypeScript is a plus).
- Solid grounding in relational databases (PostgreSQL / MySQL): schema design, indexing, query optimisation.
- Production experience with MongoDB and Redis.
- Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerised deployments.
- Hands-on DevOps experience on AWS or Azure: compute, networking, IAM, managed databases, CI/CD pipelines.
- Track record of leading technical design and mentoring engineers, formally or informally.
- Strong fundamentals in system design, distributed systems, and API design.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 institution.
Good to have:
- Python experience for scripting, data pipelines, or services.
- Exposure to AI/ML: integrating LLM APIs, building RAG or agentic workflows, or working with ML teams on productionising models.
- Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, or Bicep).
- Experience with message queues and event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS).
- Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry).
- Prior experience in a fast-growing product company or startup.
Who you are
- You lead by example and are comfortable being the most hands-on engineer in the room.
- You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.
- You balance long-term architecture with shipping iteratively.
- You take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.