
Lead Software Engineer - Systems
- Hyderabad, Telangana
- Permanent
- Full-time
At Freshworks, we're building the foundational systems that power internet-scale SaaS products. As a Lead Systems Engineer, you'll architect services that are fast, secure, and built to last. You'll work across products and platforms-owning design, deployment, and evolution of critical systems that impact everything from login to logs.If you thrive on building for scale, thinking in multi-tenant architectures, and sweating the details of performance, extensibility, and fault tolerance-you'll love this role.Responsibilities
- Design and develop systems and APIs with reliability and modularity in mind.
- Architect services to support multi-tenant, cloud-native applications.
- Lead efforts on code optimisation, refactoring, and scaling existing systems.
- Own full lifecycle-from requirement gathering to design, implementation, and support.
- Drive best practices for OOPS, design patterns, and system scalability.
- Ensure high availability (99.99%+), security, and monitoring of production systems.
- Partner with SREs, PMs, and other tech leads to deliver platform-wide capabilities.
- Mentor 2-4 systems engineers and lead technical conversations across multiple teams.
- Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA): Expertise in selecting optimal data structures and developing efficient, optimized code including time/space complexity trade-offs. Deep knowledge of REST APIs.
- Problem Solving & Logical Analysis: Ability to clearly articulate thought processes, decompose complex problems, and engineer effective solutions.
- Object-Oriented Design (OOD): Strong command of OOP principles, designing extensible code, and applying SOLID principles.
- System Design (High-Level Design - HLD & LLD): Proven ability to design scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant end-to-end systems, including APIs, schema, and data models.
- Exposure to RDBMS, caching strategies, distributed queues, and microservices.
- Exposure and experience with AI tools and technologies to improve efficiency
- Leadership & Collaboration: Demonstrates strong ownership, collaborates effectively, and shows potential for mentoring.
- System Design (HLD): Ability to gather requirements (functional/non-functional) and design scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, end-to-end systems.
- API & Database Design: Skilled in designing APIs, database schemas, and data models.
- Technical Communication: Excellent at conveying technical concepts and solutions clearly.
- Problem-Solving & Analysis: Strong analytical and logical reasoning for complex problem-solving.
- Code & Design Optimization: Capable of optimizing code and system designs for performance and efficiency.
- Code Review: Experienced in performing effective code reviews.
- Tech Stack: Knowledgeable about relevant technologies and adept at articulating suitable tech stacks for designs.
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD, DevOps tooling, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).
- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- 6 to 9 years of experience in building backend systems and infrastructure.
- You've built systems from scratch and taken them through multiple iterations.
- Experience with RDBMS, NoSQL, and queuing systems.
- Familiarity with observability, rate limiting, multi-region deployments.
- You thrive in ambiguity and move fast without sacrificing technical depth.