Staff Software Engineer (Individual Contributor 90% Hands-on Coding)
Location: Hyderabad
Experience:
- 7+ years (Tier 1 Institutions: IIT / BITS / NIT / IIIT)
- 10+ years (Tier 2 Institutions)
Educational Qualification (Strict Criteria)
- B.Tech / B.E. (Bachelor's Degree Mandatory)
- Only in:
- Computer Science
- Information Technology
- Data Science / AI-ML
- Master's degree does not substitute the Bachelor's requirement.
- Strong academic background from Tier 1 institutions preferred.
About the Role
We are looking for a highly technical Staff Software Engineer who operates as a senior individual contributor. This role is architecture-driven and coding-heavy (90% hands-on).
This is not a managerial position. Even candidates currently in Engineering Manager roles must be willing to return to a deep technical IC track.
You will:
- Own system design decisions
- Build scalable SaaS systems
- Write production-grade Python code
- Influence architecture and engineering standards
- Drive performance, reliability, and security improvements
Key Responsibilities
1. System Design & Architecture Ownership
- Personally design and influence scalable SaaS architectures.
- Define major components (API layer, data stores, background workers, caching layers).
- Make clear trade-offs between design options.
- Ensure multi-tenancy, scalability, reliability, and observability are built into systems.
2. Advanced Python Engineering
- Design and implement complex Python services.
- Structure code using modular architecture (packages, modules, separation of concerns).
- Work with:
- Async programming (asyncio)
- Type hints
- Dependency injection
- Virtual environments
- Write clean, extensible, maintainable code.
3. Future-Ready Engineering
- Build extensible systems anticipating change.
- Apply abstraction, interface-driven design, and configuration-driven patterns.
- Avoid tight coupling and hard-coded logic.
- Enable safe refactoring through strong test coverage.
4. Secure Coding Practices
- Implement authentication & authorization controls.
- Apply input validation, encryption, and secure secrets handling.
- Prevent common vulnerabilities (e.g., SQL injection, insecure deserialization).
- Follow principles like least privilege and zero trust.
- Work with OAuth, JWT, secure vaults, and environment-based secret management.
5. Performance & Scalability Optimization
- Diagnose performance issues using logs, metrics, and profiling tools.
- Optimize:
- Database queries
- Caching strategies (Redis strongly preferred)
- Background job processing
- Async workloads
- Drive architectural improvements for horizontal scalability.
6. Code Quality & Engineering Standards
- Set and uphold engineering quality bars.
- Lead code reviews.
- Enforce readability, naming standards, and modular design.
- Implement CI checks, linters, formatting tools.
- Ensure maintainability for future engineers.
7. Testing Philosophy
- Design and implement:
- Unit tests
- Integration tests
- Business logic tests
- Use tools like pytest.
- Write tests that enable confident refactoring.
- Promote testing as a core engineering discipline.
8. Operating in Ambiguity
- Make technical decisions when requirements are evolving.
- Document assumptions.
- Balance speed and correctness.
- Drive iterative delivery in unclear environments.
9. Senior Stakeholder Communication
- Present architectural decisions to leadership and review boards.
- Translate technical concepts into business impact.
- Clearly explain trade-offs, risks, and cost implications.
- Handle pushback with clarity and confidence.
10. Engineering Judgment & Reflection
- Demonstrate strong decision-making ability.
- Show ownership of mistakes and learning from them.
- Continuously improve engineering standards.
Technical Stack Expectations
- Python (Core)
- FastAPI / Django (experience preferred but depth in Python required)
- Redis
- Relational databases (Postgres/MySQL preferred)
- Cloud environments (AWS/GCP/Azure)
- CI/CD pipelines
- SaaS multi-tenant architectures
Ideal Candidate Profile
- Thinks in systems, not just features.
- Speaks in first-person ownership about technical decisions.
- Deeply understands trade-offs.
- Writes code for the next engineer, not just for today.
- Strong bias toward performance, security, and maintainability.
- Comfortable challenging architectural decisions constructively.
What This Role Is Not
- Not a people-management role.
- Not a title-based promotion.
- Not framework-only development.
- Not reactive engineering.
