Job Description
Overview
Freshworks is looking for a self-driven and highly skilled Senior Staff Software Engineer – Backend to join our dynamic engineering team. In this role, you will architect, design, and guide the development of scalable backend systems across our product suite. As a technical leader, you will set the engineering bar for backend excellence, influence cross-functional initiatives, and mentor a growing team of talented engineers. You’ll tackle complex technical challenges, foster innovation, and contribute to building robust B2B SaaS products on the cloud.
Responsibilities
Technical Architecture & Design
- Architect, design, and deliver elegant and scalable solutions to complex backend challenges.
- Design and build large-scale, distributed, and data-intensive systems with high availability and resilience.
- Make data store decisions (SQL and NoSQL) and optimize for performance and scalability.
- Advocate for a platform mindset: build with configurability, reuse, and long-term scalability in mind.
- Provide architectural guidance to other architects and engineering teams.
Hands-On Engineering
- Remain deeply technical and hands-on with programming, contributing to codebases and technical problem-solving.
- Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code; establish and uphold high code quality standards.
- Troubleshoot and resolve critical production issues; perform root cause analysis and design preventive measures.
- Lead technical incident response and ensure continuous improvements to system reliability.
Strategic Leadership
- Identify technical debt and propose solutions with phased plans for reduction.
- Set and drive engineering standards and best practices across the backend engineering teams.
- Drive innovation by identifying new technologies and opportunities aligned with internal product needs.
- Align technical initiatives with business goals and ensure execution excellence.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with product managers, architects, DevOps, and QA teams to deliver features and improvements.
- Collaborate across teams and functions on critical, high-impact projects.
- Represent backend engineering in strategic planning, roadmap discussions, and design reviews.
Mentorship & Culture
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and technical curiosity.
- Champion knowledge sharing, pairing, and design walkthroughs.
- Lead by example with discipline, ownership, and a customer-first mindset.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience.
- 13+ years of hands-on software development experience, primarily in backend or full-stack roles.
- Proven track record of designing and developing scalable backend systems in a product development environment.
- Experience working in multi-tenant B2B SaaS environments.
- Strong hands-on programming skills; polyglot with the ability to pick up new technologies.
- Deep expertise in system design, data modeling, microservices architecture, and CS fundamentals.
- Strong communication skills—both verbal and written—with the ability to articulate complex ideas clearly.
- Demonstrated experience leading teams and mentoring engineers.
- Familiarity with AWS or other cloud platforms preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in high-scale system design and architecture.
- In-depth knowledge of modern backend stacks and tooling.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams.
- Program management experience, including roadmap planning, hiring, and execution oversight.
- Exposure to monitoring, observability, and operational best practices in production systems.
Skills
Core Technical Skills
- System design and architecture for scalable, distributed systems
- Proficiency in backend programming (e.g., Java, Go, Python)
- Microservices architecture and API design
- Strong SQL and NoSQL data modeling skills
- Cloud technologies (preferably AWS)
- Performance tuning and backend optimization
- Security best practices for backend systems
Scalability and Reliability
- Experience building high-throughput, fault-tolerant systems
- Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana)
- Troubleshooting production issues and root cause analysis
- Setting up and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
Tools and Technologies
- Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra
- Message queues: Kafka, RabbitMQ, Amazon SQS
- Version control systems: Git, GitHub/GitLab
- Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform) – optional but valuable
Leadership and Execution
- Driving technical direction and architecture across teams
- Mentoring and coaching engineers
- Managing tech debt and leading critical projects
- Balancing delivery with long-term platform goals
Collaboration and Communication
- Working with cross-functional teams (Product, QA, DevOps)
- Writing clear technical documentation and design specs
- Communicating complex ideas to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Domain Knowledge
- Experience building B2B SaaS products with a multi-tenant architecture
- Platform thinking – designing for configurability and reuse
- Customer-focused engineering and performance-aware design
Additional Information
At Freshworks, we are creating a global workplace that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion irrespective of their background, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. We are committed to providing equal opportunity for all and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer work environment that advances the goals of our employees, communities and the business.
