Head of Engineering
ABOUT SHESHI
Bringing Sanctity to Numbers
Sheshi is a Financial Operating System — the governed infrastructure layer that converts raw financial data into results that organisations can completely trust. Governed, auditable, period-locked, and traceable to the source.
Finance is one of the last enterprise functions to get infrastructure-grade software. The opportunity is large, the problem is real, and the timing is right. Sheshi is building the category from the ground up.
We are headquartered in Bengaluru, India, building an enterprise-grade product for the global market.
THE ROLE
Sheshi's engineering challenge is not trivial. We are building software where correctness is non-negotiable, every calculation must reconcile, every adjustment must be traceable, every published result must be immutable. The domain logic of financial close, consolidation, multi-entity reporting, and period governance is deep, interconnected, and demands architectural precision.
As Head of Engineering, you will lead a talented team of Engineers, QA and DevOps who shape the technical direction of a platform that enterprises will depend on for their financial operations, and build the engineering culture and systems that scale with the product.
You will work directly with a Co-founder-CEO who is hands-on in both product and technology. This is a rare environment where product direction and technical direction are deeply integrated, and where engineering leadership has real strategic influence.
WHY SHESHI
The Challenges That Will Define Your Work
Engineering a Financial Operating System is a different class of problem. A few things that will shape your work here:
- Correctness at financial grade. Every number must reconcile. Every adjustment must be traceable. You will engineer systems where correctness is the product.
- Domain depth as a competitive edge. Financial close, multi-entity consolidation, period governance; these are hard problems that most engineers have never worked on. You will go deep on a domain that matters.
- Infrastructure, not a feature. Enterprises will run their financial operations on what you build. The bar for reliability, security, and performance is set by that reality, not by a roadmap item.
- Building the category. Governed results infrastructure, is the least productised layer in enterprise software. You will be part of building it from the ground up.
RESPONSIBILITIES
What You Will Build and Own
Engineering Delivery
- Own the full delivery cycle — sprint planning, execution, release readiness, and production stability.
- Define and commit to timelines with confidence. Collapse ambiguity into clear plans.
- Drive a pod-based ownership model where senior engineers own modules end-to-end.
- Work with a dedicated PM/Scrum function to maintain delivery velocity and remove friction.
- Track progress, address risks proactively, and surface them early with a path to resolution.
Technical Direction
- Shape the architecture for a platform handling complex financial data flows, multi-entity hierarchies, and period-locked immutable records.
- Set and enforce code quality standards, review culture, and architectural consistency across the platform.
- Own cloud infrastructure strategy, with informed decision-making on architecture, cost, scalability, and reliability.
- Drive database design discipline, PostgreSQL performance, schema integrity, data model correctness at financial-grade precision.
- Guide the evolution of the Node.js backend and React frontend to meet enterprise-grade reliability and performance requirements.
- Own CI/CD pipeline discipline and release management, structured, repeatable, and consistently executed.
Security, Compliance, and Technical Audits
- Embed security practices into the engineering lifecycle — OWASP alignment, vulnerability management, dependency audits, and secure API design.
- Ensure robust data protection, encryption at rest and in transit, access controls, and secrets management on AWS.
- Lead periodic technical audits to assess system health, identify architectural debt, and prioritise remediation.
- Drive readiness for enterprise security certifications, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent, as the product scales to global customers.
- Establish audit logging and traceability standards that meet both internal governance requirements and enterprise customer expectations.
Team Building
- Hire, develop, and retain Technical Leads for backend and frontend disciplines.
- Build a strong engineering culture — ownership, quality, honesty, and long-term thinking.
- Grow the team deliberately — identifying and developing strong engineers from within.
Quality and Infrastructure
- Integrate QA as a first-class engineering discipline, not a downstream gate but a parallel track.
- Own DevOps strategy, infrastructure architecture, deployment pipelines, monitoring, and reliability on AWS.
- Champion reliability and correctness as cultural values, not just technical requirements.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Your Background and Strengths
Experience
- 10–14 years in software engineering, with 5+ years leading engineering teams that ship products.
- Experience scaling engineering teams in early-stage or growth-stage startups.
- Proven experience delivering complex, domain-heavy B2B SaaS products — fintech, ERP, accounting, or enterprise software preferred.
- Track record of owning delivery end-to-end — you have set timelines, committed to them, and met them.
- Experience hiring and developing senior engineers and technical leads.
Technical Depth
- Strong hands-on background in backend engineering; should be able to challenge architecture and review code with authority.
- Deep understanding of Node.js; API design, performance, event-driven patterns, and production-grade reliability.
- Strong database design and PostgreSQL expertise — schema design, query optimisation, indexing, data integrity, and handling large-scale financial data.
- Real AWS experience — VPC, RDS, EC2/ECS, S3, CloudWatch, IAM, and the ability to make independent infrastructure decisions.
- React familiarity sufficient to hold a quality bar, evaluate frontend architecture, and work effectively with a Frontend Technical Lead.
- Application security knowledge — OWASP practices, vulnerability management, and enterprise compliance readiness.
- Understanding of financial systems or willingness to go deep on the domain — close cycles, reconciliation, consolidation, period governance, and audit trails.
Leadership Approach
- Direction is clear, with well-defined sprint plans, technical standards, and team expectations.
- Decisions are informed by a strong understanding of the work, with the ability to assess estimates, complexity, and execution risks.
- Progress is shared openly and early, keeping product, sales, and leadership aligned at all times.
- Teams operate with ownership and independence, without reliance on constant direction.
- Architectural choices reflect long-term thinking, balancing immediate delivery with sustainable system design.
