Lead Engineer – Distributed Systems

Location: Hybrid (Bangalore)Travel: Quarterly travel to Seattle(US)Education: B.Tech from premium institutes onlyNote: Only immediate joiners required/ 0 to 15 Days — no other applications accepted.Role SummaryWe are seeking top-tier Lead Engineers who can design, build, and deliver large-scale distributed systems with high performance, reliability, and operational excellence. The ideal candidate will be a hands-on engineer with expert system design ability, deep understanding of distributed architectures, and strong communication and leadership skills.The Lead Engineer must be able to convert complex and ambiguous requirements into a fully engineered architecture and implementation plan covering components, data flows, infrastructure, observability, and operations.Key Responsibilities1. End-to-End System ArchitectureArchitect scalable, reliable, and secure systems from initial concept through production rollout.Define system boundaries, components, service responsibilities, and integration points.Produce high-level (HLD) and low-level design (LLD) documents.Ensure designs meet performance, reliability, security, and cost objectives.Make informed design trade-offs with solid technical reasoning. 2. Component & Communication DesignBreak complex systems into independently deployable services.Define APIs, communication contracts, data models, and event schemas.Apply modern architecture patterns such as microservices, event-driven design, DDD, CQRS, and hexagonal architecture.Ensure component clarity, maintainability, and extensibility. 3. Communication Protocol & MiddlewareDesign both sync and async communication layers: REST, RPC, gRPC, message queues, event streams (Kafka/Kinesis/Pulsar).Define retry/timeout strategies, circuit breakers, rate limiting, and versioning strategies.Handle backpressure, partitioning, delivery semantics (at-least/at-most/exactly once). 4. Data Architecture & Storage StrategyArchitect data models and storage strategies for SQL and NoSQL databases, distributed caches, blob stores, and search indexes.Define sharding/partitioning, replication, consistency, indexing, backup/restore, and schema evolution strategies.Design real-time and batch data processing pipelines. 5. Operational ReadinessDefine observability (metrics, logs, traces) requirements.Collaborate with DevOps to ensure deployment, monitoring, alerts, and incident management readiness.Provide production support as a senior technical owner.6. Leadership & InfluenceLead technical discussions, design reviews, and cross-team collaboration.Mentor engineers and help elevate team practices.Influence technology direction and architectural standards. Required Qualifications10+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong backend and distributed systems background.Proven track record of leading large-scale architecture and delivery of production systems.Expert in system design with the ability to simplify ambiguity and craft robust solutions.Strong programming experience in one or more languages (Java, Go, Python, C++).Deep understanding of distributed systems, message streaming, queues, RPC/REST, and event-driven architecture.Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and container technologies (Kubernetes/Docker).Strong communication, documentation, and leadership skills. Preferred SkillsExperience with large-scale messaging/streaming (Kafka/Pulsar), caching, and NoSQL.Experience designing for high availability, fault tolerance, and performance at scale.Mentoring and leading global engineering teams.Familiarity with observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, Jaeger).