About Vahan
At
Vahan, we are building India's first AI-powered recruitment marketplace for the country's
300 million+ blue-collar workforce, creating access to better jobs and brighter economic opportunities.
Today, Vahan is India's largest recruitment platform, backed by leading investors including
Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, LemmaTree (a Temasek-founded investment firm), Persol Group, Bharti Airtel, Vijay Shekhar Sharma (CEO, Paytm), and senior leaders from
Google and
Facebook.
Our customers include industry leaders such as
Swiggy, Zomato, Rapido, Zepto, and many more. Using AI and cutting-edge technology, we help companies hire at scale with speed and precision.
Our Vision
Our mission is to become the world's leading platform for blue-collar professionals—empowering them with not only earning opportunities but also the tools, benefits, and support they need to thrive. We aim to positively impact over
one billion lives globally.
If solving meaningful, large-scale engineering challenges excites you, we'd love to have you join us.
Role: Senior Backend Engineer
This is a
Senior Individual Contributor (IC) role with strong technical leadership responsibilities. You'll remain hands-on while driving backend architecture, scalability, engineering quality, and technical direction across critical systems.
You'll influence engineering decisions through technical expertise—not people management.
Key Responsibilities
Backend Ownership
- Own the design, evolution, and reliability of mission-critical backend systems.
- Ensure scalability, performance, maintainability, and overall system health.
- Lead technical initiatives to address scaling challenges, technical debt, and architectural improvements.
System Design & Architecture
- Drive both High-Level Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD).
- Design scalable APIs, data models, service boundaries, and asynchronous workflows.
- Make sound engineering trade-offs balancing delivery speed with long-term system health.
Code Quality & Engineering Excellence
- Improve backend code quality through architecture reviews, code reviews, and refactoring.
- Simplify complex codebases and establish maintainable engineering patterns.
- Introduce best practices and guardrails to improve long-term maintainability.
Database & Performance Optimization
- Optimize PostgreSQL performance through schema design, indexing, query optimization, and tuning.
- Improve application performance using caching strategies and asynchronous processing.
- Design and operate analytics pipelines using ClickHouse or similar large-scale data systems.
- Work with messaging systems such as RabbitMQ or equivalent.
Technical Leadership
- Mentor backend engineers on architecture, debugging, and engineering best practices.
- Influence technical direction through thoughtful design discussions and strong technical reasoning.
- Raise overall engineering standards across teams.
Production Ownership
- Own production stability, incident management, and root cause analysis.
- Improve observability, monitoring, debugging, and operational excellence.
- Drive long-term reduction in production incidents and operational overhead.
Required Skills & Experience
Must Have
- 7+ years of backend engineering experience.
- Strong expertise in Node.js.
- Deep experience with PostgreSQL, including performance tuning and optimization.
- Experience designing and operating distributed backend systems.
- Strong understanding of system design, scalability, and microservices architecture.
- Experience owning backend services end-to-end—from architecture to production support.
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.
- Experience improving code quality, maintainability, and engineering standards.
Good to Have
- Experience with RabbitMQ or similar messaging systems.
- Experience with ClickHouse or large-scale analytics platforms.
- Experience deploying and managing applications on AWS.
- Strong knowledge of observability, monitoring, and production reliability.
What We're Looking For
Engineering Mindset
- Passion for improving existing systems rather than simply building new ones.
- Ability to simplify complex architectures and create maintainable solutions.
- Strong focus on writing clean, readable, and scalable code.
- Testing mindset with emphasis on reliability and long-term quality.
- Ability to evaluate technical trade-offs and design for future scalability.
Leadership Without Authority
- Influence technical decisions through expertise and clear reasoning.
- Challenge scope or timelines when necessary to protect system health.
- Mentor engineers and elevate overall engineering standards.
- Lead by example through hands-on technical excellence.
Why Join Vahan
- Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO)
- Comprehensive Medical Insurance
- Monthly Wellness Leaves
- Competitive Compensation
- Opportunity to solve large-scale engineering challenges impacting millions of users
- Ownership-driven engineering culture with significant technical autonomy
- Work alongside exceptional engineers building products that create meaningful social impact
Skills:- NodeJS (Node.js), PostgreSQL, Performance tuning, Distributed Systems and Systems design
