Software Development Engineer- Backend

Job SummaryWe're looking for a Senior Backend Software Development Engineer (SDE 3) with deep technical expertise in building and operating production systems at scale. You'll own entire components/services within microservices and data pipelines that handle ~200K queries per second and process petabytes of data daily . This role demands hands-on coding excellence, strong Low-Level Design (LLD) skills, and complete ownership—from component architecture through infrastructure management to cost optimization. You'll architect solutions, lead technical decisions, and drive operational excellence while shipping code daily.Key Responsibilities:Component Ownership: Own one or more critical components/services end-to-end—responsible for architecture, development, deployment, operations, and evolutionTechnical Ownership: Own the entire lifecycle of your components—design, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvementLow-Level Design: Create detailed technical designs (LLD) for complex systems—defining data models, APIs, concurrency patterns, and failure modesHands-on Development: Write production-grade code daily—this is not a purely architectural role; you'll be deep in the codebaseInfrastructure Ownership: Own and operate the infrastructure your components run on—capacity planning, scaling, reliability improvementsCost Management: Drive cost optimization for owned components—analyze spending, identify waste, implement efficient architecturesScale & Performance: Build and optimize systems handling 200K+ QPS and petabyte-scale data processingObservability: Design and implement comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and debugging capabilities for owned componentsIncident Leadership: Lead incident response for your components and related services, conduct post-mortems, drive systemic improvementsOn-Call Excellence: Participate in on-call rotations and ensure your components are operationally sound (runbooks, alerts, dashboards)Technical Roadmap: Define and drive the technical roadmap for your owned components—balancing feature development, tech debt, and operational improvementsTechnical Mentorship: Guide junior and mid-level engineers on system design, code quality, and production best practicesCross-functional Collaboration: Work with product, infra, and other eng teams to define requirements and deliver solutionsAgile Execution: Break down complex projects, deliver incrementally in daily cadence, iterate based on feedbackRequired Qualifications:Experience: 5+ years building and operating backend systems in production environments at scaleEducation: B.E./B.Tech in Computer Science or equivalent practical experienceComponent Ownership: Proven track record of owning significant components or services from inception to maturity—demonstrable end-to-end ownershipLow-Level Design (LLD): Proven ability to create detailed technical designs—data structures, algorithms, API contracts, concurrency models, failure handlingProgramming Mastery: Expert-level proficiency in at least one modern language (Go, Python, Java, etc.) with track record of writing maintainable, performant production codeDatabases: Deep hands-on experience with SQL and NoSQL databases—schema design, query optimization, indexing strategies, operational troubleshootingMicroservices at Scale: Extensive experience building, deploying, and operating microservices handling high throughput and large data volumesData Pipelines: Strong background designing and running data processing pipelines at scale (batch and/or streaming)Observability: Expert understanding of metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting—you know how to make systems debuggableProduction Operations: Significant experience with incident response, on-call rotations, debugging live issues under pressureInfrastructure Knowledge: Hands-on experience managing infrastructure, understanding resource utilization, capacity planningCost Consciousness: Experience analyzing and optimizing infrastructure costs at scaleDistributed Systems: Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, concurrency, consistency models, and failure scenariosAccountability: Track record of taking full ownership—from design through deployment to ongoing operations and improvementsPreferred Qualifications:Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) including cost management toolsKubernetes and container orchestration at scaleInfrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, etc.)Streaming data systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kinesis, Flink, etc.)SRE principles and reliability engineering practicesExperience with FinOps or infrastructure cost optimizationPerformance profiling and optimization (CPU, memory, I/O)Technical leadership experience including mentorship of teams and driving multi-component initiativesOpen source contributions or recognized technical writing