Python Developer

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.

• Backend development along with team management
• Hands on experience in product development 
• Preferred candidates from Fintech and Banking sectors
• Exp in Python / Java slong with databases like MySQL, NoSQL, etc
• Knowledge of Agile methodology

The Role:

We are looking for an enthusiastic Technology Lead (Python or Node), who adopts a hands-on approach and loves to build scalable, distributed and large web / mobile products. You would be responsible for designing the architecture, reviewing the code, building the technology and deploying web/mobile applications.

Responsibilities:

• Own the product development from scratch.
• Design and implementation of low-latency, high-availability, and performant applications.
• Architect scalable software solutions and mentor a team of high performing developers.
• Participate in code reviews, design reviews, SCRUM ceremonies, and troubleshoot to ensure uptime for live systems etc.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in a technology-related field from a premier college.  
• Prior 4+ years of experience in back-end development (Python/ Golang) in a start-up or a dynamic work environment.
• Good exposure in writing and optimizing SQL for high-performance systems.
• Understanding of asyncio and eventloop/ uvloop concepts. Knowledge of frameworks such as Quart/ Fastapi/ Starlette is preferred.
• Knowledge of AWS; Caching technologies like Redis, Memcache; ELK; mySQL Databases, etc.
• Strong understanding of System Design, Microservice Architecture, Kafka, Pub/Sub, Message queues, and in-memory data stores etc.
• Customer oriented, responsive to changes, and able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Rewrite existing APIs in NodeJS.
• Remodel the APIs into Micro services-based architecture.
• Implement a caching layer wherever possible.
• Optimize the API for high performance and scalability.
• Write unit tests for API Testing.
• Automate the code testing and deployment process.

Skills Required:

1. At least 3 years of experience developing Backends using NodeJS — should be well versed with its asynchronous nature & event loop, and know its quirks and workarounds.
2. Excellent hands-on experience using MySQL or any other SQL Database.
3. Good knowledge of MongoDB or any other NoSQL Database.
4. Good knowledge of Redis, its data types, and their use cases.
5. Experience with graph-based databases like GraphQL and Neo4j.
6. Experience developing and deploying REST APIs.
7. Good knowledge of Unit Testing and available Test Frameworks.
8. Good understanding of advanced JS libraries and frameworks.
9. Experience with Web sockets, Service Workers, and Web Push Notifications.
10. Familiar with NodeJS profiling tools.
11. Proficient understanding of code versioning tools such as Git.
12. Good knowledge of creating and maintaining DevOps infrastructure on cloud platforms.
13. Should be a fast learner and a go-getter — without any fear of trying out new things Preferences.
14. Experience building a large scale social or location-based app.

1. Develop, maintain, and enhance robust backend systems using Python3 and frameworks like Django (mandatory), Flask, and FastAPI (good to have).
2. Design, implement, and maintain highly efficient and automated continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes using Jenkins and configuration management with Ansible.
3. Elevate our testing culture by architecting and implementing innovative testing strategies, focusing on both unit and integration testing to ensure exceptional code quality and extensive coverage.
4. Follow peer-to-peer code reviews and cross-team collaboration to build scalable and reliable solutions.
5. Proficiently work with at least one cloud technology, preferably AWS, to deploy and manage applications in the cloud environment.
6. Possess knowledge of Nginx, load balancing, and scalability to optimize system performance and reliability.
7. Good experience working in distributed micro-service architecture and driving them with crucial requirements like request tracing, debugging critical issues, logging, monitoring, and alerting. 
8. Work in containerized environments using Docker and Docker Compose, and have experience with AWS ECS for container orchestration.
9. Prioritize maintainability and reliability in developing and maintaining software systems, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in our product ecosystem.
10. Collaborate effectively within a team, taking initiatives and driving projects forward with minimal micro-management.
11. Pave the way for maintainable and reliable codebases by introducing novel approaches and best practices in software development.

Requirements

1. Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in computer science.
2. Strong teamwork and communication skills, with a proactive approach to project management and task ownership.
3. Proven track record as an innovative Python developer with a focus on product engineering.
4. Visionary mindset to work in an agile environment, participating in sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.

Benefits

100% Remote

Insurance

The Risk team is responsible for overall risk framework and strategy for the organization. The team develops various risk models, arrives at various sector reports from a risk perspective and provides in depth analysis and recommendation around risk profiles of various clients.

In this role, the person is responsible for playing a leadership role in the Risk function to identify, assess, monitor and make timely and measured judgments on all current and potential future risks faced, in order to protect the organization’s interest, assets and reputation of the group along with growing shareholder value and profitability.

Responsibilities

• Manage risk for the retail and wholesale portfolio. Should have managed organization level Risk Policies, Credit Underwriting and Collection functions.
• Manage risk framework for the organization - including updating, establishing new risk management mechanisms, to identify, assess, monitor, measure and control a broad spectrum of risks. Ensure all policies and frameworks are kept updated and deployed to the optimum level.
• Develop continuous monitoring and improvement of the quality of the organization's credit and lending portfolio through credit policy direction and implementation.
• Possess a complete understanding the business. Evaluate, improve, and monitor the business, including assisting in reporting to the Board and Board Committees and providing leadership in the effectiveness of credit risk management controls, systems, and processes across the organization.
• Lead and mentor a team of analysts.

• Possess 7+ years of relevant experience in financial services industry in a risk role.
• Exposure to both wholesale and retail risk in a banking environment will be preferred. Some experience in a business / sales role within the banking / NBFC space will be an added advantage.
• Should have held a position of authority in terms of allocation and appropriating limits.
• Sector understanding in financial institution space and good knowledge of interpreting financial trends.
• High proficiency in Python and SQL/NoSQL.
• Experience with big data and cloud computing e.g., PySpark, data lake is a plus.
• Outstanding written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to speak at various levels of an organization (CXOs to analysts).
• Have demonstrated resilience – stayed with companies and taking businesses to scale, have preferably not ‘hopped jobs. Strong organizational skills and excellent follow-through.
• Present / articulate / position an idea compellingly and ability to work in a fast-paced dynamic environment.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Takes personal ownership; Self-starter; Ability to drive projects with minimal guidance and focus on high impact work.
• Learns continuously; Seeks out knowledge, ideas and feedback.