Sr Software Engineer – PHP, JavaScript & AI | Design & Architecture

Team  -Support Operations — Technical Solutions 

Level  - IC3 (4–7 years of relevant experience) 

Location  - India (Remote) IST time zone, with overlap with US East/Central teams 

Reports To -Technical Manager 

Manages -Not a people-manager role, but a lead role with real technical authority 

Employment Type -Full-time 

ABOUT DELTEK 

Deltek is the leading global provider of software and solutions for project-based businesses — serving government contractors, professional services firms, and architecture & engineering companies. Our products help customers manage the full project lifecycle, from winning work and planning resources to executing delivery and getting paid. 

The Support Operations Technical Solutions team sits inside Deltek's Customer Success organization. We build and maintain the internal tooling, integrations, and AI-powered workflows that allow Deltek's support and customer success teams to operate at scale — intelligent case routing, knowledge-base agents, data pipelines between Salesforce, Gainsight, and Oracle Service Cloud, and automation that removes manual work from high-volume support processes. 

THE ROLE 

We are looking for a Senior System Engineer to take technical ownership of our most complex solutions. This is not a management role — it is a senior individual contributor role with real architectural authority and a multiplier effect on the team around you. 

You own problems end-to-end. You design the solution before writing the first line, consider downstream impacts before committing to an approach, and hold the technical bar for the work your team delivers. You are the person a junior engineer turns to when they're stuck, and the person a business stakeholder trusts to tell them whether an idea is feasible and what it will cost to maintain. 

In your first year, you can expect to: 

• Own the end-to-end design and delivery of major integrations and AI-enabled components from architecture through deployment and post-launch stability 
• Lead solution design for the team's most complex problems using PHP, JavaScript, Workato, APIs, and Web Services 
• Evaluate technology and platform tradeoffs and make defensible, documented recommendations that balance short-term delivery with long-term maintainability 
• Apply AI, automation, and agentic architectures to business problems at production scale — not as experiments, but as shipped systems 
• Anticipate performance, operational, and security risks before they reach production; design with those constraints in mind from day one 
• Set engineering standards and review the work of IC1/IC2 engineers, making them better through structured feedback and clear design expectations 
• Partner directly with CS operations leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into concrete technical strategies 

This role suits an engineer who is past proving they can build things, and is now focused on building the right things in the right way — and helping others do the same. 

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR 

Must-Have Technical Skills 

• PHP and JavaScript: Production depth: You have designed and shipped non-trivial systems in these languages. You understand performance characteristics, know where the footguns are, and write code you'd be comfortable having reviewed by a senior peer. 
• Integration architecture: You have designed system-to-system integrations — not just consumed APIs. You understand data flow, transformation logic, error handling, retry strategies, and idempotency. 
• AI / LLM applied experience: You have built or led the build of AI-assisted workflows, LLM-based tools, or agentic systems in an operational or product context. You know the difference between a demo and a production-grade AI system. 
• Relational databases: Query and schema design: You write optimized SQL, design schemas with long-term maintainability in mind, and understand when a query will cause production problems before it does. 
• Full-stack troubleshooting at depth: You can diagnose complex, multi-layer issues — across front-end, API, back-end, and database — and trace the root cause without being handed a reproduction case. 
• Technical tradeoff analysis: When evaluating tools, platforms, or approaches, you can articulate the tradeoffs clearly — not just pick what you know best — and document the rationale in a way that holds up six months later. 
• Agile technical leadership: You have led technical workstreams in a sprint-based environment: broken down epics, written meaningful acceptance criteria, and been accountable for team delivery quality. 
• Documentation and design artifacts: You produce architecture diagrams, solution designs, and technical decision records that others can act on — not just notes for yourself. 

Must-Have Leadership & Soft Skills 

• Technical mentorship: You actively make the engineers around you better. Code reviews are teaching opportunities, not gatekeeping. Design reviews are conversations, not approvals. 
• Stakeholder communication: You can translate a technical constraint into a business impact, and a business requirement into a technical specification. You don't hide behind jargon or over-simplify to avoid hard conversations. 
• Ownership under ambiguity: When a problem is poorly defined, you ask the right questions to define it — then own the answer. You don't wait for complete requirements before starting to think. 
• Proactive risk management: You raise issues before they become incidents. You've learned from production failures and carry those lessons into design decisions. 
• Business context awareness: You understand how the systems you build affect end users and business operations. You've made engineering decisions informed by that context, not just by technical preference. 

Nice-to-Have Skills 

Prioritized by relevance to this team's current and near-term roadmap: 

Oracle Service Cloud 

Workato / iPaaS 

Salesforce 

Gainsight 

Agentic AI / LLM Ops 

Snowflake 

Microsoft Power BI 

Microsoft Power Apps 

Cloud-native development 

Experience designing agentic AI systems — not just integrating LLM APIs — is highly relevant to where this team is going. Candidates who have shipped multi-step agent architectures with tool-calling, memory, and guardrails will stand out. 

RESPONSIBILITIES 

Design & Architecture 

• Own end-to-end technical solution design — from requirements through architecture, implementation, and post-launch stability — for the team's most complex initiatives 
• Lead solution design using PHP, JavaScript, Workato, APIs, and Web Services; ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with established governance standards 
• Evaluate tradeoffs across tools, platforms, and architectural patterns; produce documented recommendations that account for both short-term delivery needs and long-term operational cost 
• Anticipate downstream impacts, performance bottlenecks, and operational risk during the design phase — not as an afterthought in retrospect 
• Author and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and technical design documents for all major solution components 

AI, Automation & Integration 

• Apply AI, automation, and agentic architectures to complex business problems at production scale — designing for reliability, observability, and graceful failure 
• Lead the integration of AI-enabled components (LLM workflows, intelligent routing, agentic tools) into the team's operational platform 
• Design and oversee integrations between Deltek's CS platforms (Oracle Service Cloud, Salesforce, Gainsight) and internal data systems, ensuring data integrity, performance, and auditability 
• Evaluate new AI frameworks, LLM providers, and automation platforms; provide grounded, implementation-level recommendations rather than theoretical assessments 

Technical Leadership & Mentoring 

• Serve as the primary technical reviewer for IC1/IC2 engineers — conducting structured code and design reviews that build capability, not just ship code 
• Break down complex initiatives into well-scoped workstreams that junior engineers can execute with confidence and appropriate independence 
• Establish and enforce engineering standards: code quality, documentation, testing coverage, deployment practices, and incident response 
• Identify skill gaps in the team and work with the manager to address them through pairing, documentation, or structured learning 

Stakeholder & Cross-functional Engagement 

• Translate ambiguous business and operational requirements from CS leadership into concrete technical strategies with clear milestones and measurable outcomes 
• Engage directly with senior stakeholders — CS operations leads, product owners, IT — to align on priorities, surface risks, and manage technical expectations 
• Represent the technical perspective of the team in cross-functional planning and architecture discussions 

Operate & Improve 

• Own post-launch stability of solutions you design: monitor, respond to incidents, and drive root-cause resolution — not just resolution 
• Drive continuous improvement of the team's delivery practices: identify process friction, propose solutions, and follow through on implementation 
• Stay current on AI, automation, and integration technology evolution; bring relevant advances back to the team with a concrete point of view on applicability 

QUALIFICATIONS 

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a related technical discipline. Equivalent demonstrated experience considered. 
• Experience: 4–7 years of hands-on experience in software engineering, systems integration, or closely related work, with at least 2 years at a level where you have owned technical design decisions — not just implemented them. 
• Coding evidence: A portfolio, GitHub profile, architecture document, or production system you can speak to in depth. At IC3, we expect you to be able to walk through a non-trivial design decision you made and defend the tradeoffs. 
• AI / ML: Practical, production-level experience with LLMs or AI tooling — not just prompt engineering or personal experimentation. Familiarity with frameworks such as LangChain, OpenAI APIs, or similar platforms is a strong plus. 
• Collaboration model: Comfortable working as a technical authority in a distributed team. The role requires regular IST overlap with US East/Central stakeholders (approximately 6:30 PM – 10:30 PM IST for at least part of the week). 
• Language: Strong written and spoken English. At IC3, much of your influence operates through written design documents, async reviews, and stakeholder communications. Precision in writing matters. 

WHAT TO EXPECT WORKING HERE 

• Technical authority with real impact — your design decisions ship to production and affect how thousands of Deltek customers experience support 
• Exposure to production AI/agentic systems and direct involvement in shaping where the team's AI roadmap goes next 
• A team where senior engineers are trusted to lead, not managed step-by-step — you will have autonomy commensurate with your accountability 
• Structured growth path: IC3 engineers who demonstrate architectural leadership and cross-functional influence have a clear track toward Staff or Associate Director scope 
• Regular 1:1s, design review forums, and a manager who will invest in your growth rather than just your output