Tech Lead

Job Description The short version: Who we're looking for: A hands-on Tech Lead who thrives on building scalable, elegant, and impactful products - and equally enjoys mentoring a young team to achieve technical excellence. What the role is about:You'll lead both product development and the expansion of Kraftshala's tech team, architecting solutions across our learning, admissions, and internal platforms that serve thousands of users. Why you should apply: If you want to take end-to-end ownership of high-impact consumer and internal products, shape the technical direction of a fast-scaling education brand, and work directly with the founder - this role is for you. About us: Kraftshala is India's largest higher-education institution in terms of marketing placements, with a 94% placement rate across 3,000 candidates, and we are gunning to become the world's largest career launchpad, across domains. We're backed by a number of eminent investors including ex-unicorn startup founders and CXOs of global giants like RedBus, NoBroker, Nestl, and Performics. The detailed version: As Tech Lead at Kraftshala, you'll balance hands-on product development with strategic leadership. You'll own the architecture, code quality, and team growth across consumer-facing learning platforms and internal systems that enable India's most driven professionals to learn and transform their careers. Specific Responsibilities & Metrics to Measure: - Architect scalable solutions across web and backend systems. Metrics to measure: System uptime, latency, and scalability benchmarks. - Oversee all stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) from design to deployment. Metrics to measure: Adherence to sprint goals, timely releases, and delivery predictability. - Write clean, modular, and reusable code that follows engineering best practices. Metrics to measure: Code review quality scores, post-deployment bug rates, and test coverage levels. - Lead hiring, onboarding, and mentorship of engineers to grow a strong, high-performing on-site team. Metrics to measure: Team expansion and retention rates, skill development progress, and peer feedback quality. - Collaborate with product, design, and operations teams to prioritize and deliver high-impact features that drive business outcomes. Metrics to measure: Feature adoption rates, user satisfaction scores, and delivery-to-impact ratios. - Build and own Kraftshala's technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with the company's long-term goals. Metrics to measure: Roadmap milestone achievement rate and on-time completion of strategic initiatives. Monthly Outcomes - Month 1: Get familiar with existing architecture, systems, and team. Take ownership of ongoing projects and identify bottlenecks in performance, code quality, or delivery speed. - Month 2: Establish coding and review standards, streamline the sprint process, and plan for the transition to a fully on-site, full-time tech team. - Month 3+: Architect and execute key product improvements or refactors (consumer or internal systems). Hire and groom new developers while improving system reliability and scalability. Top Grading - Ownership & Accountability: An A-Player takes full ownership of product and technical outcomes, anticipating challenges and ensuring alignment across stakeholders, whereas a B-Player delivers their part well but often leaves gaps in follow-through or accountability beyond their direct scope. - Problem Solving & Technical Depth: An A-Player brings structured thinking and deep technical judgment to complex problems, balancing short-term solutions with long-term scalability, whereas a B-Player relies on patchwork fixes or lacks the ability to evaluate trade-offs effectively. - Learning Agility: An A-Player actively learns and applies new technologies or architectural patterns to improve product performance and team efficiency, while a B-Player sticks to existing methods even when they're outdated or limiting. - Bias for Action: An A-Player drives progress by making thoughtful, fast decisions and unblocking teams with clear direction, whereas a B-Player tends to overanalyze or defer decisions, slowing down momentum. - Team Leadership & Collaboration: An A-Player elevates the team by mentoring engineers, giving structured feedback, and aligning tech priorities with business goals, whereas a B-Player delegates without coaching and communicates mainly within technical boundaries. - Technical Vision & Architectural Thinking: An A-Player sees the bigger picture - designing systems that can evolve with the company's growth and documenting reasoning clearly, while a B-Player focuses narrowly on the current release without anticipating scalability or maintenance implications. - Value-Additive Mindset: An A-Player consistently looks for ways to improve efficiency, product quality, or developer experience beyond their assigned work, whereas a B-Player focuses primarily on task completion without pushing for broader improvements. Must Haves - 4-9 years of experience as a part of a consumer product-oriented team (We are not too fussed about the number of years. Experience is simply a proxy for capability, which is what we really care for). - The ability to understand & design REST APIs and Web Development Architecture - Good knowledge of relational database systems such as MySQL and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. - Experience of working on large scale Node.js applications with React.js - Ability to write Performance Optimized Code - Strong product design sensibilities and obsessive attention to detail - Ability to manage a hosting environment, including database administration as well as scaling applications to handle load changes - Experience in AWS (mandatory) Selection Process As a small team, we must get to know each other before taking the leap. We want to ensure you succeed in your role within our team. Each conversation with us will last about 30-60 minutes, and will be a mix of online and in-person interactions. - Conversation 1: This will be a virtual call with the HR team to understand your profile briefly and share the details of the selection process to set expectations about what you're signing up for - Conversation 2: This will be a conversation where you can expect to be evaluated on the competencies needed for the job (mentioned above). - Technical Exercise: This is a specific assessment designed to evaluate your fit for this role - Conversation 3: This will be a detailed assessment review conversation to go over your submission for the technical exercise. - Conversation 4: A conversation with our CEO to ensure that there is a fit with the Kraftshala Kode (read below about it). - Extending an offer: If all goes well, we will extend an offer that will mention the relevant details. Location: Delhi