Lead or Principal Engineer - Full Stack

role = "Lead or Principal ENGINEER" if raises_bar(team) and depth >= LEGENDARY and ships_code else "SENIOR"

Let’s decode this

We're not just looking for someone who has "been around for 10+ years". We're looking for someone who has raised the bar for backend or full-stack engineering for 10+ years.

• raises_bar(team) → The people around you write better code because you are there. You mentor through pairing and feedback, not hierarchy.
• depth >= LEGENDARY → You have gone deep enough to hold strong opinions, and humble enough to change them.
• ships_code → You still build. Regularly. In production.

This role isn’t for everyone. It’s for engineers who want to stay close to the code, go deep, and build software where AI is becoming part of the system. If that sounds like you - Apply.

What the work looks like

We can't promise which problem you'll pick up, but the menu right now looks something like this:

• Redesign a ClickHouse schema so an ad buyer can query 85 billion rows in under two seconds, and discover that pre-exploding the rows 168x is actually the right answer.
• Keep a vehicle telemetry platform moving billions of messages a day without the Kafka consumers falling over.
• Build the engineering spine of a mobile wallet used by more than two billion people across four continents.
• Ship the data product behind peer-review submissions for one of the world's largest scientific publishers.

The list changes. The pattern doesn't: data-heavy, distributed, and often sitting on top of something that already exists and isn't perfect.

What you will actually do

• Design and build systems that deal with real-world complexity (not toy problems).
• Write production code frequently, not just review or direct.
• Build services and applications that interface with modern AI stacks - model APIs, embeddings, vector databases and other AI capabilities.
• Ship robust, production-level AI-powered systems.
• Work across languages when needed, not just your comfort zone.
• Break down messy problems into clean, maintainable systems.
• Push back on bad ideas, including ours.

You won’t be:

• A people manager.
• A “review-only” architect.
• Someone removed from the code.
• Someone whose job is primarily model training or ML research.

How we think about engineering

We care about:

• Code that is simple, testable, and built to change.
• Engineers who can explain their design decisions clearly.
• TDD, refactoring, and continuous improvement - not as rituals, but as tools.
• Choosing the right technology, not the fashionable one.
• Software engineers who understand AI - not necessarily ML researchers who happen to write software.

We don’t care much about:

• Buzzwords.
• Framework loyalty.
• Whether you’ve used our exact stack before.

Tech (context, not a checklist)

TypeScript, Java, Scala, Kotlin, Go, Elixir, Python, .NET, Node.js, Rust

You don't need to have shipped all of these. You do need the ability to learn what the problem demands.

What you’ll get: A different kind of organization

• A place where Lead and Principal Engineers still write code daily.
• Work with exceptional people who deeply care about their craft
• One designation across the company: Solution Consultant. "Lead / Principal Engineer" is just the translation for the outside world.
• Small teams, high ownership, large impact, minimal process overhead.
• No reporting managers. Decisions happen where the code does.
• Find your balance between work and life’s ups and downs with unlimited leave when you really need it.
• Open salaries. Inside Sahaj, every Sahajeevi can see every other Sahajeevi's pay, including the founders'. The annual hike is voted on collectively in a room where the whole company reads the P&L.