Tech Lead - Java

Our Mission

To make video as accessible to machines as text and voice are today.

At lookup, we believe the world's most valuable asset is trapped. Video is everywhere, but it's unsearchable—a black box of insight that no one can open or atleast open affordably. We’re changing that. We're building the search engine for the visual world, so anyone can find or do anything with video just by asking.

Text is queryable. Voice is transcribed. Video, the largest and richest data source of all, is still a black box. A computer can't understand it, and so its value remains trapped.

Our mission at lookup is to fix this.

About the Role

We are looking for founding Backend Engineers to build a highly performant, reliable, and scalable API platform that makes enterprise video knowledge readily available for video search, summarization, and natural‑language Q&A. You will partner closely with our ML team working on vision‑language models to productionize research and deliver fast, trustworthy APIs for customers.

Examples of technical challenges you will work on include: distributed video storage, a unified application framework and data model for indexing large video libraries, low‑latency clip retrieval, vector search at scale, and end‑to‑end build, test, deploy, and observability in cloud environments.

What You’ll Do:

• Design and build robust backend services and APIs (REST, gRPC) for vector search, video summarization, and video Q&A.
• Own API performance and reliability, including low‑latency retrieval, pagination, rate limiting, and backwards‑compatible versioning.
• Design schemas and tune queries in Postgres, and integrate with unstructured storage.
• Implement observability across metrics, logs, and traces. Set error budgets and SLOs.
• Write clear design docs and ship high‑quality, well‑tested code.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to integrate and productionize VLMs and retrieval pipelines.
• Take ownership of architecture from inception to production launch.

Who You Are:

• 3+ years of professional experience in backend development.
• Proven experience building and scaling polished WebSocket, gRPC, and REST APIs.
• Exposure to distributed systems and container orchestration (Docker and Kubernetes).
• Hands‑on experience with AWS.
• Strong knowledge of SQL (Postgres) and NoSQL (e.g., Cassandra), including schema design, query optimization, and scaling.
• Familiarity with our stack is a plus, but not mandatory: Python (FastAPI), Celery, Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Weaviate, React.
• Ability to diagnose complex issues, identify root causes, and implement effective fixes.
• Comfortable working in a fast‑paced startup environment.

Nice to have:

• Hands-on work with LLM agents, vector embeddings, or RAG applications.
• Building video streaming pipelines and storage systems at scale (FFmpeg, RTSP, WebRTC).
• Proficiency with modern frontend frameworks (React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS) and responsive UI design.

Location & Culture

• Full-time, in-office role in Bangalore (we’re building fast and hands-on).
• Must be comfortable with a high-paced environment and collaboration across PST time zones for our US customers and investors.
• Expect startup speed — daily founder syncs, rapid design-to-prototype cycles, and a culture of deep ownership.

Why You’ll Love This Role

• Work on the frontier of video understanding and real-world AI — products that can redefine trust and automation.
• Build core APIs that make video queryable and power real customer use.
• Own systems end to end: performance, reliability, and developer experience.
• Work closely with founders and collaborate in person in Bangalore.
• Competitive salary with meaningful early equity.

• Experience in API development using Java will be a plus.

• Excellent knowledge and experience in writing testable, scalable, flexible, robust and efficient web applications using JavaEE 6/7 technologies, specifically, Spring core, Spring Boot Spring Data, spring batch and JPA
• Experience in successfully deploying Java-based applications in production and understanding load-balancing, authentication, and fault tolerance through Tom Cat.
• Experience in database modeling (MySQL/NoSQL databases such as Mongo DB)

• Knowledge of integrating with Ant, Maven, GIT and Shell scripting.
• Strong backend experience to develop Data Layer using at least one of the ORM frameworks like Hibernate, JPA etc.
• Strong RDBMS Skills and SQL skills. Experience in MySQL, Teradata and warehousing databases.

• Experience in Analytics frameworks and visualization products.

• Excellent knowledge and experience of Maven, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery with Jenkins.
  • Experience with JavaScript frameworks, especially Angular is a definite plus.

Java 8, J2EE , Spring Boot, Microservices, Apache Spark, DevOps, Advanced SQL, preferably with

expertise in Data engineering/Data analytics,

ELK(Elastic Search, Logstash , Kibana) stack, Teradata, any No SQL database, Hands on experience in

maintaining products on Cloud Technologies like PCF, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, etc, NodeJS,

Angular 2x, GitLab with CI/CD, Hands on experience in Unix server, Shell scripting, Large data

processing, Performance tuning, Experience in working in various Test Automation frameworks like

Selenium, Test NG, Python, Cucumber, Karma, Karate/ Jasmine, etc

Experience in using Eclipse, Spring tool suite, Project building tools - Maven, Gradle, etc, JIRA for ALM.

Job Description:

Good knowledge of python & Java. The order of need should be

1. Builds (TeamCity/Jenkins, Urban Code Deploy, ANT/Maven)
2. Python scripting
3. JAVA
4. Linux/Unix

And candidate should possess knowledge on the below :

• JIRA or other
• Agile (Scrum/Kanban, etc.)
• Bit bucket/GIT/SVN/Artifactory
• Linux/Unix
• Jenkins/Team City – ANT/Maven
• Usage & setup of IDE’s

Skills Required:

• Must-Have: Java, Spring/spring-boot, Data structure, Algorithm
• Any 2 (Must) out of the below-mentioned list : 

a.     JPA/Hibernate

b.     Messaging queue/Kafka/SQS/distributed message/SNS/JMS

c.     NoSQL/Aerospike/Reddis/Cassandra

d.     Microservices

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Technical design, implementation, deployment, and support.
• Partner with Business Analysts to review and implement business requirements.
• Perform development and unit testing, working closely with Business.
• Mentors and oversees the development of resources, including reviewing designs and performing code reviews.
• Ensure designs are in compliance with specifications
• Contribute to all phases of the development lifecycle
• Developing high-volume, low-latency applications for mission-critical systems and delivering high availability and performance
• Should have experience of working on Core Java/J2EE & OOPS concept
• Should be well versed with Spring/Struts & Apache Camel (OSGI Framework)
• Should have a good understanding of Hibernate and Other ORMs
• Should have an understanding of working on Web Service (SOAP/REST) and Maven
• Build tools such as Jenkins
• Caching Technique(Radis, Hazlecast, Aerospike)
• Database Knowledge - Oracle, MySQL

Job Description :

LOCATION: Bangalore

Please find the JD Below:

Job title- ATL/Technical Lead

Experience

1. Must have experience
   1. Extensive product development experience
   2. 5-10 years experience in back end Java Development
   3. Possess advanced knowledge of object-oriented design and development (OOA/OOD). 
   4. Team task assignment, mentoring and helping resolve issues 
   5. Self-starter, ability to work with minimal supervision.
   6. Skilled at working collaboratively in a team-oriented environment. 
   7. Excellent problem-solving skills. Curious and adept at researching project-related issues and challenges.
   8. Excellent debugging skills

1. Good to have
   1. Experience in SOA and microservice deployment model.
   2. GWT development experience
   3. Experience of working in an Agile development model
   4. Mixed experience in different type of organizations - product start up and large enterprises

Other Skills

1. Strong Analytical skills
2. Acumen for understanding customer's business goals
3. Process oriented- Following current processes and partner in process improvement.
4. Data oriented- Using data and knowledge base for solving current problem at hand and creating software knowledge base for future use.
5. Ability to juggle multiple development and design tasks simultaneously.