Lead Software Architect

Lead software Architect

Wualt (primary), with architectural oversight of Nexus

Full-time · Chennai, India (Hybrid)

ABOUT THE ROLE

Wualt is a personal-safety platform. Someone wearing a smart ring, or simply carrying their phone, can raise an SOS and get help quickly, with their live location and audio shared to trusted guardians and a staffed response centre, and AI that helps flag genuine distress. It spans mobile apps, web consoles, and cloud back-end services.

We are looking for a Lead Technical Architect to own the architecture of Wualt as our current architect transitions out. This is a hands-on leadership role, and Wualt is your primary focus. To start, you will be a team of one: you will pick up the existing codebase and take it through to deployment across all of Wualt's apps and web apps yourself, and build a team around you over time. You will also provide architectural oversight of Nexus, our apparel manufacturing platform, at a guidance level rather than day to day. We want a genuine polyglot who sets the technical direction, keeps the product secure and scalable, and raises the bar on engineering and product quality.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Wualt's architecture, end to end: the mobile apps, the web consoles, the back-end services and APIs, and the cloud infrastructure underneath.

• The system-level decisions: technology choices, service boundaries, data flows, and build-versus-buy calls. You own the trade-offs and you document them.

• Real-time reliability for safety-critical flows. When someone raises an alarm, the live experience has to be fast and it cannot drop. You design for that.

• Architecture for scale, so the product stays fast and dependable as usage grows.

• Security and privacy as a first-class concern: airtight security in every layer, and data handling architected to comply with India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA).

• The quality of the front-end experience across mobile and web, in partnership with design. Fast, polished, and a genuine pleasure to use.

• A pragmatic use of AI tooling to build faster and build more, while keeping full ownership of the architecture and engineering judgment. AI accelerates the work. It does not make the decisions.

• AI and ML in the product. We use AI and ML capabilities, and you own integrating them into the platform reliably and securely.

• The team, over time. To start you are the team, hands-on across the whole platform. As we grow, you build and lead a lean engineering team: design and code reviews, engineering standards, and mentoring.

• A clean handover from the outgoing architect, with full ownership of Wualt within 30 days of joining

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• A clear track record of shipping enterprise-grade applications and products to production, at scale.

• Strong across our core technologies: React Native for mobile, React for web, and Python and Django on the back end, on AWS.

• A genuine polyglot. You move comfortably between languages and frameworks, choose the right tool rather than forcing one stack, and can give sound architectural guidance on systems built in stacks other than your primary one.

• Real-time, event-driven systems. Experience building live, low-latency features (for example WebSockets or streaming media) that stay reliable under load.

• Strong database design experience across relational and NoSQL stores, for example PostgreSQL and MongoDB.

• Hands-on experience architecting for data protection and privacy, including the DPDPA, or comparable regimes such as the GDPR.

• A security-first mindset, with real experience designing secure systems: authentication and authorization, encryption, secrets management, and threat modeling.

• A strong product and front-end sensibility. You care how the software looks and feels, not only how it runs.

• A base-level understanding of AI and ML systems. We use AI and ML in the product and you will integrate it into the platform, so you need to be comfortable working with models and ML services, even if you are not an ML researcher.

• Fluency with AI-assisted development, and the maturity to treat it as an accelerant to your own architectural reasoning rather than a substitute for it.

NICE TO HAVE

• Wearables, IoT, or BLE and connected-device experience, and data-intensive or machine-learning-backed products.

• Enterprise or ERP domain experience across manufacturing, supply chain, or procurement, useful for the Nexus oversight side.

• Cloud and DevOps depth: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and observability.

• Experience as the senior-most engineer on a platform, or leading a small team.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• First 30 days: a full context transfer from the outgoing architect, and a documented map of Wualt, its risks, and the near-term priorities, plus a lighter read on Nexus.

• By 60 days: a prioritized architecture and security roadmap for Wualt with the highest-risk gaps already closing, and a working oversight rhythm for Nexus.

• By 90 days: you are the clear technical owner of Wualt, decisions move quickly, the team is shipping against your roadmap, and Nexus is guided at the right altitude.

LOCATION AND TYPE

Full-time, based in Chennai, hybrid with regular on-site collaboration. You will work directly with the founders and a lean in-house and partner engineering team.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply through this LinkedIn posting, and email your resume to [Confidential Information]. A short note on one system you architected end to end, the trade-offs you made, and what you would do differently now is welcome, along with links to shipped products or a portfolio.