Senior Software 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 Senior Software Engineer (Backend) to join our dynamic software development team. In this role, you will contribute to key backend projects, collaborate across teams, and play a vital part in delivering robust, scalable, and high-performance software solutions. As a senior engineer, you will work independently, make impactful technical decisions, and help shape the backend architecture while collaborating with a passionate, high-performing team.

You will work hands-on with products primarily built in Python, with opportunities to contribute to Golang. These technologies are at the core of our development stack, and your focus will be on building, scaling, and maintaining distributed services. Distributed systems are integral to our architecture, providing a chance to gain hands-on experience with maintaining and optimizing them in a fast-paced environment.

As a Senior Engineer, you are expected to:

• Write clean, maintainable, and testable code while following best practices.
• Architect solutions, address complex problems, and deliver well-thought-out technical designs.
• Take ownership of assigned modules and features, delivering them with minimal supervision.
• Contribute to code reviews and technical discussions, ensuring high-quality deliverables.

We highly value open source contributions and encourage you to check out our work on GitHub at Appknox GitHub. While no prior experience in security is required, our experienced security professionals are available to support you in understanding the domain.

This role offers a unique opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology, drive impactful solutions, and grow within a collaborative environment that values autonomy, innovation, and technical excellence.

Responsibilities:

• Drive backend development for a disruptive product in the Security domain, focusing on innovation, performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Take ownership of the software design process, including designing workflows, system architecture, and implementation plans.
• Translate functional and technical requirements into detailed architecture and design, making independent decisions to ensure efficiency and scalability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including frontend and security teams, to deliver cohesive and high-quality solutions.
• Conduct thorough code reviews to ensure adherence to best practices, maintainability, and coding standards.
• Write clean, maintainable, and testable code using Django and Python, adhering to industry best practices.
• Design and implement scalable software components, frameworks, and APIs using Django and Django REST Framework (DRF).
• Troubleshoot, debug, and optimize existing systems to improve functionality and performance.
• Create detailed technical documentation, including flowcharts, layouts, and system requirements, to ensure clarity and alignment.
• Develop and enforce robust software verification plans, quality assurance procedures, and deployment strategies.
• Ensure timely delivery of software updates while addressing user feedback to enhance solutions.
• Provide technical expertise to solve backend challenges and participate in critical decision-making processes.
• Support team growth by sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and mentoring junior engineers informally as needed.

Requirements:

• 5–6 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 with the ability to make independent technical 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 practices, including Test-Driven Development (TDD), CI/CD pipelines, and deployment processes.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to document and present technical specifications and workflows clearly.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and microservices architectures is a bonus.
• Self-motivated and capable of working independently in a fast-paced environment with minimal supervision.
• Ability to handle ambiguity and adapt to rapidly changing business needs while maintaining focus on delivering quality solutions.

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 bugs, 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 3 months-

• Achieve full autonomy in working on the codebase, demonstrating the ability to independently deliver high-quality features from design to deployment.
• Take complete ownership of critical modules, ensuring they are optimized for performance and maintainability.
• Act as a technical resource for the team, offering support and guidance to peers on complex issues.
• Collaborate with DevOps to optimize deployment pipelines, debug production issues, and improve backend infrastructure.
• Lead discussions for technical solutions and provide recommendations for architectural improvements.
• Contribute to the design of new features by translating functional requirements into detailed technical specifications.
• Prepare regular updates on assigned tasks and communicate effectively with the engineering manager and other stakeholders.

Within 6 months-

• Be fully independent in their development tasks, contributing to key features and solving critical challenges.
• Demonstrate strong problem-solving skills and the ability to take ownership of technical modules.
• Actively participate in code reviews and technical discussions, ensuring high-quality deliverables.
• Collaborate seamlessly with cross-functional teams to align technical solutions with business requirements.
• Establish themselves as a reliable and proactive team member, contributing to the team’s growth and success.

Personality traits we really admire :-

• Great attitude to ask questions, learn and suggest process improvements.
• 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 - Profile Evaluation (EM)
• Round 2 Interview - Assignment Evaluation & Technical Problem Solving Discussion (Tech Team)
• Round 3 Interview - System Design (Sr. Architect)
• Round 4 Interview - Engineering Team & Technical Founder (CTO)
• Round 5 Interview - HR

Compensation

• Best in industry

We prefer that every employee also holds equity in the company. In this role, you will be awarded equity after 12 months, based on the impact you have created.

Please be aware that all your customers are Enterprises and Fortune 500 companies.

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 health insurance coverage upto 5 Lacs for you and your family including parents.

• System engineering and implementation in Golang.
• Working on performance issues using creative experiments and internally developed product features.
• Research, propose, and integrate relevant open-source projects based on product objectives.
• Write organized, efficient, and well documented Python/Golang code as an example for junior engineers.
• Participation in all levels of product definition, design, implementation, testing, and deployment.
• Must include the ability to discuss abstract system architectures from ideas through implementation and
• creatively apply domain experience to solve technical challenges.
• Mentoring software engineers, fostering an environment of trust and accountability.

• Strong Golang skills to develop framework(s).
• Hands-on to design & develop re-usable framework components.
• Hands-On experience on developing framework, designing re-usable framework components.
• Experience in engineering practices such as code refactoring, design patterns, design driven development,
• Continuous Integration, building highly scalable applications, application security and functional programming.

• Knowledge of Cloud native would be an advantage.
• Understanding of Kubernetes from Architecture side and also understand the Standard API.
• Code contributed to CNCF or similar community will be plus.
• Performance benchmarking of K8’s or any cloud will be added advantage.

• Deep understanding of technology and passionate about what you do.
• Background in designing high performant scalable software systems with strong focus to optimize hardware cost.
• Solid collaborative and interpersonal skills, specifically a proven ability to effectively guide and influence within a dynamic environment.
• Strong commitment to get the most performance out of a system being worked on.
• Prior development of a large software project using service-oriented architecture operating with real time constraints.

• You will get a chance to work on cloud-native and hyper-scale products
• You will be working with industry leaders in cloud.
• You can expect a steep learning curve.
• You will get the experience of solving real time problems, eventually you become a problem solver.

• Competitive Salary
• Health Insurance
• Open Learning - 100% Reimbursement for online technical courses.
• Fast Growth - opportunities to grow quickly and surely
• Creative Freedom + Flat hierarchy
• Sponsorship to all those employees who represent company in events and meet ups.
• Flexible working hours
• 5 days week
• Hybrid Working model (Office and WFH)

• Initial Resume screening call with our Recruiting team
• Next, candidates will be invited to solve coding exercises.
• Next, candidates will be invited for first technical interview
• Next, candidates will be invited for final technical interview
• Finally, candidates will be invited for Culture Plus interview with HR
• Candidates may be asked to interview with the Leadership team
• Successful candidates will subsequently be made an offer via email
• As always, the interviews and screening call will be conducted via a mix of telephonic and video call.

Description:

For over 10 years, Zscaler has been disrupting and transforming the security industry. Our 100% purpose-built cloud platform delivers the entire gateway security stack as a service through 150 global data centers to securely connect users to their applications, regardless of device, location, or network in over 185 countries protecting over 3,900 companies and have detected 100 Million threats/day. 

We work in a fast-paced, dynamic and make it happen culture. Our people are some of the brightest and passionate in the industry that thrives on being the first to solve problems.  We are always looking to hire highly passionate, collaborative and humble people that want to make a difference.

About the role :

This is a senior staff backend engineer role in the engineering team that designs, implements and maintains our state of the art product IllusionBLACK. The team is responsible for designing and implementing secure, highly performant and maintainable product.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, develop and maintain high performance, fault tolerant and scalable cloud hosted service using NodeJS
• End to end responsibility to continuously create and monitor the services you build
• Help design reusable and clean API's for our frontend React app
• Guide team members with handling complex issues
• You will also be responsible for database schema design and development of migration scripts
• Experiment with new technologies and ideas and help shape our stack and processes

Requirement:

• 10+ years professional SW development experience
• All our production applications are built with either Typescript or Python. You must have a strong understanding of NodeJS express apps written in Typescript and ES6
• Must have good experience with Python
• Solid experience with databases is a must. We use and love Postgres here at Smokescreen
• You should be able to design a complex database SQL schema normalized to 3NF on the back of a napkin at 3am in the morning
• Deep understanding and working knowledge of Redis cache
• Experience with Solr or Elasticsearch is a must. We use Solr for our event analytics exclusively
• Experience with AWS, Azure or GCP is a plus. We have a large distributed application running on AWS
• Experience with Docker/Swarm is a plus
• Experience in some stream processing platforms like Kafka/Redis stream is a plus

• 3 years experience working on Python, Django and DRF (must have projects)
• Back-end Development, Third Party SDK Implementation, CI/CD
• Pipeline with AWS, Containerization of Server, Caching, Micro-service Implementation
• Architecture design of the web applications.
• Implementation of a robust set of services and APIs to power the web application.
• Building reusable code and libraries for future use.
• Optimization of the application for maximum speed and scalability.
• Writing reusable, testable, and efficient code.
• Design and implementation of low-latency, high-availability, and performant applications.
• Integration of user-facing elements developed by front-end developers with server-side logic.
• Implementation of security and data protection.
• Translation of UI/UX wireframes to visual elements