Networking Architect

For a startup run by a serial founder:

Job Description :

- Architect and develop our B2B platform, focusing on delivering an exceptional user experience.

- Recruit and mentor an engineering team to build scalable and reliable technology solutions.

- Work in tandem with co-founders to ensure technology strategies are well-aligned with business objectives.

- Manage technical architecture to guarantee performance, scalability, and adaptability for future needs.

- Drive innovation by adopting advanced technologies into our product development cycle.

- Promote a culture of technical excellence and collaborative spirit within the engineering team.

Qualifications :

- Over 8 years of experience in technology team management roles, with a proven track record in software development and system architecture + Dev Ops

- Entrepreneurial mindset with a strong interest in building and scaling innovative products.

- Exceptional leadership abilities with experience in team building and mentorship.

- Strategic thinker with a history of delivering effective technology solutions.

Skills :

- Expertise in modern programming languages and application frameworks.

- Deep knowledge of cloud platforms, databases, and system design principles.

- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.

- Strong communication skills with the ability to lead cross-functional teams effectively.

CTO / Head of Engineering

About our Client

Our client is a B2B2C tech firm backed by India’s largest retailer and tech venture capitalist founded by founders - IITB Graduates who are experienced in retail, ecommerce and fintech

It aims to become one app to manage all your brands loyalty points, cashback and coupons. It will have additional content and discovery layer for customers and brands for further engagement and commerce.

The company currently powers closed-loop loyalty programs for all different brands under its parent retail group. Currently, it has 20Mn+ registered customers and 3Mn MAU across 8 brands. Its vision is to be at the center of D2C Brands and the consumer consumption ecosystem

Role description:
We are looking for a competent CTO (Chief Technology Officer) who will be our first technology go-to expert and play an integral role in setting the company’s strategic direction, development and future growth. In this position, you will oversee our overall technology development and technology utilization plan to manage all information technology resources of our company.

Key Responsibilities

•  CTO will be leading, building, and operating exciting products with a passionate team.
•  We are looking for someone who has developed and deployed software with a strong focus on end-user experience. We are seeking someone with a proven track record of shipping web scalable products.
•  The ideal candidate will have a track record of building and delivering cloud solutions with delightful consumer experiences, combined with ease of implementation/reliability.
•  Experience with massively scalable distributed compute product architectures.
•  Experience with micro services-oriented architectures, Experience with scaling Big Data infrastructure.
•  Experience delivering platform technology and creating an ecosystem of applications and services across multiple verticals and solution offerings
•  Experience successfully scaling technology infrastructure to support rapid customer /data growth.
•  Experience with fast-paced, rapidly-iterating, design-forward, product-focused companies.
•  "Roll-up-your-sleeves" entrepreneurial, start-up attitude, team player with record of leading and mentoring employees

Candidate Experience: Desired skills

•  He/she should have prior work experience of 7-12 years on large-scale mobile app products and can rapidly familiarize yourself with complex products
•  Have inclination to learn and build new age products with blockchain and web3 tech
•  Strong track record of being able to develop and set release plans, track deadlines, deliverables, resource allocations, issues/risks and create mitigation strategies as needed to deliver a quality product on time
•  Strong technical and architecture skills in wide areas of platform engineering with proven ability to dive deep in any area as needed.
•  Extensive experience with eCommerce platforms, cloud systems, payment solutions, digital marketing technology, automation, and multi-device development is required; AWS experience is a strong plus
•  Experience managing Small teams and remote teams is a strong plus
•  Competent in driving a culture of continuous learning to improve technology and remove roadblocks that hold the team back.

Why is this a great opportunity for the right candidate :

•  Experienced founding team
•  Backed by Future Group which gives an edge over working with different D2C and traditional brands ecosystem which is necessary to win in this market
•  Existing app customer base of 20Mn registered and 4-5 Mn MAU + which gives us a head start and starting customer base of FuturePay necessary for pivoting the product to Carrot as described earlier
•  Right to win - The founding team knows the business & its secrets inside out. We are starting with a significant head start and a precise plan of action
•  Barriers to entry - This is a specialized play with natural barriers to entry, allowing for significant value creation for all equity holders
•  Exposure to all aspects of company building - exposure to investors, fund-raising, decision making, building the team & culture
•  All of the above perks of joining a high potential company very early, along with a competitive market salary.

• upGrad was awarded the Best Tech for Education by IAMAI for 2018-19,
• upGrad was also ranked as one of the LinkedIn Top Startups 2018: The 25 most sought-after startups in India.
• upGrad was earlier selected as one of the top ten most innovative companies in India by FastCompany.
• We were also covered by the Financial Times along with other disruptors in Ed-Tech.
• upGrad is the official education partner for Government of India - Startup India program.
• Our program with IIIT B has been ranked #1 program in the country in the domain of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

• Work with Product Managers and Business to understand business/product requirements and vision.
• Provide a clear architectural vision in line with business and product vision.
• Lead a team of architects, developers, and data engineers to provide platform services to other engineering teams.
• Provide architectural oversight to engineering teams across the organization.
• Hands on design and development of platform services and features owned by self - this is a hands-on coding role.
• Define guidelines for best practices covering design, unit testing, secure coding etc.
• Ensure quality by reviewing design, code, test plans, load test plans etc. as appropriate.
• Work closely with the QA and Support teams to track quality and proactively identify improvement opportunities.
• Work closely with DevOps and IT to ensure highly secure and cost optimized operations in the cloud.
• Grow technical skills in the team - identify skill gaps with plans to address them, participate in hiring, mentor other architects and engineers.
• Support other engineers in resolving complex technical issues as a go-to person.

• 12+ years of experience in design and development of ecommerce scale systems and highly scalable SaaS or enterprise products.
• Extensive experience in developing extensible and scalable web applications with
  • Java, Spring Boot, Go
  • Web Services - REST, OAuth, OData
  • Database/Caching - MySQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, Memcached/Redis
  • Queue/Broker services - RabbitMQ/Kafka
  • Microservices architecture via Docker on AWS or Azure.
  • Experience with web front end technologies - HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript libraries and frameworks such as jQuery, AngularJS, React, Vue.js, Bootstrap etc.

• Extensive experience with cloud based architectures and how to optimize design for cost.
• Expert level understanding of secure application design practices and a working understanding of cloud infrastructure security.
• Experience with CI/CD processes and design for testability.
• Experience working with big data technologies such as Spark/Storm/Hadoop/Data Lake Architectures is a big plus.
• Action and result-oriented problem-solver who works well both independently and as part of a team; able to foster and develop others' ideas as well as his/her own.
• Ability to organize, prioritize and schedule a high workload and multiple parallel projects efficiently.
• Excellent verbal and written communication with stakeholders in a matrixed environment.
• Long term experience with at least one product from inception to completion and evolution of the product over multiple years.