Backend Engineer

A BIT ABOUT US

Appknox is one of the top Mobile Application security companies recognized by Gartner and G2. A profitable B2B SaaS startup headquartered in Singapore & working from Bengaluru.

The primary goal of Appknox is to help businesses and mobile developers secure their mobile applications with a focus on delivery speed and high-quality security audits.

Our business includes Fortune 500 companies with Major brands spread across regions like India, South-East Asia, Middle-East, Japan, US, and expanding rapidly. 

The Opportunity:

We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Engineer (Backend) to join our dynamic software development team. In this role, you will take ownership of key backend projects, drive cross-functional collaborations, and lead efforts to deliver robust, scalable, and high-performance software solutions. You will be focused on solving complex problems and influencing technical strategy across multiple teams. As a engineering leader, you will have the autonomy to make technical decisions, define project scope, and guide the direction of backend architecture while working with a passionate, high-performing team.

You will be working hands-on with products built on Python, with additional contributions in Golang and Rust. These technologies are central to our development stack, and your focus will be on developing, scaling, and maintaining distributed services. A core part of our architecture involves distributed systems, so you will gain in-depth experience in maintaining, optimizing, and scaling these systems in a fast-paced environment.

As a lead engineer, we expect you to not only code but also architect solutions, make independent technical decisions, and navigate complex problem spaces. You will be trusted with significant ownership, and your expertise will play a key role in shaping the future of our product and technology stack.

We strongly value open source contributions, and encourage you to check out our work on GitHub at Appknox GitHub. While we have experienced security professionals onboard to guide you, a background in security is not required for this position.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the backend development for a disruptive product in the Security domain, driving innovation while improving performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Own the software design process, including designing workflows, system architecture, and feature implementation plans.
• Ensure timely delivery of high-quality software solutions by coordinating sprints, planning releases, and managing cross-team dependencies.
• Translate functional and technical requirements into detailed architecture and design, taking independent decisions to ensure efficiency and scalability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, providing guidance and support to developers to ensure high-quality deliverables.
• Conduct thorough code reviews to ensure code quality, maintainability, and adherence to best practices, while mentoring team members in coding standards
• Write clean, maintainable, and testable code, adhering to best practices and coding standards.
• Design and implement software components, frameworks, and APIs using Django and Python.
• Create flowcharts, layouts, and documentation to identify system requirements and solutions.
• Develop and enforce robust software verification plans, quality assurance procedures, and deployment strategies.
• Troubleshoot, debug, and upgrade existing systems to enhance functionality and performance.
• Ensure regular updates, maintain software systems, and evaluate user feedback to improve solutions.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers, fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented environment.
• Act as the go-to expert for backend technical challenges, driving solutions and decision-making processes across the team.

Requirements:

• 5–8 years of professional experience in backend development with a strong focus on Django and Python.
• Proficiency in Django REST Framework (DRF), relational databases, SQL, and ORMs (e.g., Django ORM, SQLAlchemy).
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to make independent decisions regarding system design and implementation.
• Hands-on experience in designing and developing scalable, maintainable, and high-performing backend systems.
• Deep understanding of software engineering methodologies, including Test-Driven Development (TDD) and CI/CD practices.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to document technical specifications and workflows clearly.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor a small team of engineers, providing technical guidance and support without formal people management responsibilities.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and microservices architectures is a bonus.
• Self-driven and able to operate autonomously in a fast-paced environment
• Able to handle ambiguity and adapt to rapidly changing business needs.

Work Expectations:

Within 1 month

• Attend KT sessions conducted by the engineering and product teams to gain a deep understanding of the product, its architecture, and workflows.
• Learn about the team's development processes, tools, and key challenges.
• Work closely with the product team to understand product requirements and contribute to the design and development of features.
• Dive deep into the existing backend architecture, including database structures, APIs, and integration points, to fully understand the technical landscape
• Begin addressing minor technical challenges and tasks, while understanding the underlying architecture and tech stack.
• Begin to participate in creating action plans for new features, ensuring that design and implementation are aligned with product goals.

Within 2 months

• Take ownership of specific features or modules within the codebase, including the responsibility for their design, development, and delivery.
• Begin identifying potential areas for improvement in the codebase and propose strategies for optimization and scalability.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure high-quality deliverables while mentoring team members on coding standards and best practices.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g., frontend, DevOps, QA) to align technical implementation with business objectives.
• Develop technical documentation for the assigned modules or features, ensuring maintainability and ease of onboarding for new engineers.
• Start contributing to the sprint planning process by estimating effort, identifying dependencies, and mitigating risks.

Within 3 months

• Take complete control of the codebase, demonstrating the ability to work independently and make critical decisions on system design and implementation.
• Lead the development and delivery of key features, ensuring they meet performance, scalability, and maintainability requirements.
• Act as a technical mentor for the team by guiding junior engineers and providing support to peers when needed.
• Drive cross-team collaboration, ensuring smooth communication between engineering, DevOps, and product teams.
• Lead and own the technical discussions for new features, contributing to architectural decisions and resolving technical challenges.
• Monitor and improve development processes, suggesting tools or methodologies to enhance team productivity and software quality.
• Prepare and deliver regular updates to stakeholders on project progress, risks, and mitigation strategies.

Within 5-6 months

• Be fully autonomous in the codebase and capable of leading a small team of engineers.
• Demonstrate strong decision-making skills and the ability to deliver high-quality features independently.
• Establish themselves as the go-to expert for the backend codebase and act as the technical POC for cross-functional teams.
• Play a pivotal role in enhancing team productivity and aligning technical solutions with business needs.

Personality traits we really admire:

• Great attitude to ask questions, learn and suggest process improvements.
• Follows timelines and absolute commitment to deadlines.
• Has attention to details and helps identify edge cases.
• Highly motivated and coming up with ideas and perspective to help us move towards our goals faster.
• Follows timelines and absolute commitment to deadlines.

Interview Process:

• Round 1 Interview - TA Profile Evaluation
• Round 2 Interview - Assignment Evaluation
• Round 3 Interview - Engineering Team & Technical Founder
• Round 4 Interview - HR

Compensation:

• As per Industry Standards

Why Join Us:

• Freedom & Responsibility: If you are a person who enjoys challenging work & pushing your boundaries, then this is the right place for you. We appreciate new ideas & ownership as well as flexibility with working hours.
• Great Salary & Equity: We keep up with the market standards & provide pay packages considering updated standards. Also as Appknox continues to grow, you’ll have a great opportunity to earn more & grow with us. Moreover, we also provide equity options for our top performers.
• Holistic Growth: We foster a culture of continuous learning and take a much more holistic approach to training and developing our assets: the employees. We shall also support you all on that journey of yours.
• Transparency: Being a part of a start-up is an amazing experience one of the reasons being the open communication & transparency at multiple levels. Working with Appknox will give you the opportunity to experience it all first hand.
• Health insurance: We offer family health insurance coverage to employees.

Job Description:

We are looking for a Python Developer to join our team and help us

develop and maintain various software products. A self-driven coder with a zeal to

learn and work on multiple projects. Ultimately responsible for building highly

responsive web applications that align with our business needs.

Required Skills:

1. Extensive experience developing enterprise applications using Python.

2. Extensive experience in designing applications using the framework Django Flask.

3. Must have good hands-on Django and Django Rest Framework for web

framework.

4. Familiarity with some ORM (Object Relational Mapper) libraries.

5. Able to integrate multiple data sources and databases into one system

6. Understanding of the threading limitations of Python, and multi-process

architecture.

7. Basic understanding of web mark-up, front-end technologies such as JavaScript,

HTML5, and CSS3 .

8. Extensive experience with MySQL or any relational database.

9. Familiarity with event-driven programming in Python.

10. Must be well versed with Docker.

11. Understanding of the differences between multiple delivery platforms, such as

mobile vs desktop, and optimizing output to match the specific platform.

12. Strong unit test and debugging skills.

13. Knowledge of AI, and chat GPT will be added.

14. Should have experience in LANG Chain.

15. Proficient understanding of code versioning tools.

16. Must have basic knowledge of Machine Learning or Bots & and work experience is a plus.

Roles and Responsibilities:

1. Should be responsible for the development of applications in Python (Framework).

2. Integration of user-facing elements developed by front-end developers with server-side logic.

3. Will be mainly responsible for developing with Django & Flask framework.

4. Will be responsible for writing reusable, testable, and efficient code.

5. Will be working in a team or individually as per the requirement.

6. Can also be involved in client handling, and requirement gathering as per the demand of the project.

7. Prime focus will be ensuring high performance and responsiveness to requests from the front-end

Hybrid / On-site (Bangalore)

What is the role?

Xoxoday is looking for a candidate who has a strong background in the design and implementation of scalable architecture and a good understanding of Algorithms, Data structures, and design patterns. Candidates must be ready to learn new tools, languages, and technologies. We are offering hybrid / remote options as well.

Basic Qualifications:

• At least 4 -7 years of experience as a software developer.
• At Least 3 years of experience in .net core C#, AWS stack, MS SQL Server, MVC, NodeJS experience is a plus
• Strong working knowledge in distributed event-driven messaging architecture/platform
• Strong knowledge in data access layer especially ability to work with stored procedure
• Established and stimulated software development standards and processes along with best practices for delivery of scalable and high-quality software.
• Production experience with AWS stack
• Fluent English speaker

Preferred Qualifications:l

• Experience working with OOP languages.
• Experience designing and developing Microservices and SOA.
• Experience working with AWS Kinesis, Lambda, SQS, S3, ElastiCache, ElasticSearch, Kubernetes, EventBridge, RDS, CloudWatch, APIGateway
• Experience designing and building high-performance scalable web services.
• Experience in REST API design and implementation.
• Experience in unit testing, test automation, and continuous delivery.
• Experience with stream-processing and message-broker software.

Nice to have:

• Experience working with distributed teams.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to work quickly toward tight deadlines, and make smart tradeoffs between speed, accuracy, and maintainability.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science (or equivalent professional experience).

A wholesome opportunity in a fast-paced environment that will enable you to juggle between concepts, yet maintain the quality of content, interact, and share your ideas and have loads of learning while at work. Work with a team of highly talented young professionals and enjoy the benefits of being at Xoxoday.

Xoxoday is a rapidly growing fintech SaaS firm that propels business growth while focusing on human motivation. Backed by Giift and Apis Partners Growth Fund II, Xoxoday offers a suite of three products - Plum, Empuls, and Compass. Xoxoday works with more than 2000 clients across 10+ countries and over 2.5 million users. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Xoxoday is a 300+ strong team with four global offices in San Francisco, Dublin, Singapore, New Delhi.

We look forward to connecting with you. As you may take time to review this opportunity, we will wait for a reasonable time of around 3-5 days before we screen the collected applications and start lining up job discussions with the hiring manager. We however assure you that we will attempt to maintain a reasonable time window for successfully closing this requirement. The candidates will be kept informed and updated on the feedback and application status.

• Work with stakeholders and fellow developers.
• Design and implement Python code using the Django framework.
• Identify and fix bottlenecks that may arise from inefficient code.
• Identify and fix software bugs.
• Create a wide variety of unit tests to verify the functionality of software.
• Manage the security of the platform.
• Write detailed documentation around the code.
• Knowledge of front end languages.

• Hands-on experience in backend programming languages.
• Experience in Python 3.X & Django is a must. Knowledge of .NET, Java, PHP is an added advantage.

• Hands-on experience in front-end technologies like Angular, jQuery, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SCSS, etc.

• Experience with leading technical teams and acting as a technical mentor.
• Experience in client communication & reporting to the client-side management team.
• Experience in AWS is an added advantage.

• 3+ years of work experience as a Python Developer. 
• Sound understanding and knowledge of Python and its ecosystem libraries like pandas and numpy. Also be able to write modular code and understand the python packaging system. 

• Experience on web crawling, scraping (Scrapy,BeautifulSoup, Selenium) and web application development using Django/Flask Framework. 
• Experience on Data-Science; exposure to Theanos, Tensorflow, Pytorch (preferable) 
• Exposure to data mining, Pyspark (preferable)