Technical Lead/Software Development Engineer III - Java

About the Role :

As an SDE3 / Tech Lead at Aspora, you'll own the technical direction of a domain not just write code in it. You'll design microservices, make build-vs-buy calls, break complex epics into shippable chunks, and drive the technical decisions that shape how banking, payments, or platform infrastructure evolves.

You'll lead a sub-team of 3-5 engineers, unblock them, review their designs, and raise the quality bar for the domain. You'll work directly with PMs to negotiate scope, identify what's launch-critical vs. what belongs in backlog, and make sure your team ships the right things not just ships fast.

This is the transition from execution to strategy. You're not just solving problems anymore you're deciding which problems are worth solving.

What You'll Own :

• A domain (2-3 services or a bounded context) : e.g., NRI banking flows, transaction orchestration, onboarding & KYC, beneficiary management, or platform infrastructure. You own the architecture, the quality, and the roadmap.
• Epic breakdown : take ambiguous product requirements and decompose them into well-scoped, implementable tasks with clear acceptance criteria.
• Design reviews : review designs from SDE1/SDE2 for scalability, fault tolerance, and alignment with platform patterns. Catch problems before they become code.
• Technical decisions : caching strategies, async processing patterns, database selection, API versioning, encryption approaches. You decide, with rationale.
• Build vs buy : evaluate third-party integrations (payment processors, identity verification, banking APIs) against internal build cost. Make the recommendation, own the outcome.
• Sub-team leadership : lead 3-5 engineers. Co-own their KPIs with the EM. Unblock them. Mentor them formally not just "help when asked" but actively develop their technical judgment.
• Incident response : lead root cause analysis, drive postmortems, and implement systemic fixes. Not just "restart the pod."

Tech Stack :

• Languages : Java 21 (primary), Go (tooling & CLIs)
• Frameworks : Spring Boot, JDBI, custom workflow orchestration engine
• Databases : PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, DynamoDB, Redis
• Messaging : SQS, SNS, Kafka
• Infrastructure : AWS (EKS, ALB, RDS, S3, Secrets Manager), Kong API Gateway, Datadog, Quickwit
• Security : JWT/RBAC, TLS, request/response encryption, VAPT, source code reviews
• CI/CD : GitHub Actions, Docker, ArgoCD
• Patterns : Microservices, event-driven architecture, saga/orchestration patterns, maker-checker workflows, CDC pipelines

What We Need :

Technical (must-have) :

• 4-7 years of backend engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years operating at a design/architecture level
• Experience designing microservices with proper boundaries, contracts, and inter-service communication patterns
• Caching strategy design not just "add Redis" but understanding cache invalidation, TTL strategies, dual-layer caching
• Async processing event-driven architectures, queue-based processing, retry strategies, dead letter handling
• Observability mindset structured logging, metrics, alerting, distributed tracing. You've debugged production issues using dashboards, not just logs
• Experience making build-vs-buy decisions with real trade-off analysis
• Strong code review practice you catch DTO leakage across layers, implicit ordering contracts in batch operations, and services that violate their bounded context

Technical (strong plus)

• Experience with fintech/banking domain payment rails (IMPS/NEFT/RTGS/SWIFT), CBS integrations, KYC/AML flows
• Platform thinking identifying reusable patterns across services and building shared infrastructure
• Experience with workflow/orchestration engines
• Security awareness VAPT processes, RBI compliance, data encryption at rest and in transit

Leadership (non-negotiable) :

• You break down ambiguous epics into concrete, estimable tasks not "TBD" tickets
• You negotiate scope with PMs. You push back when a feature isn't launch-critical and propose phased rollouts
• You unblock your team if someone is stuck for more than a few hours, you notice and intervene
• You identify technical debt proactively and advocate for addressing it with business justification
• You improve team processes sprint ceremonies, code review standards, definition of done
• You've formally mentored junior/mid engineers and can point to their growth as evidence
• Competency Expectations Aligned with [Aspora's Engineering Competency Framework]

Technical Execution :

Competency - What we expect :

- Microservices Design - Designs microservices with proper boundaries and contracts

- Scale Design - Caching strategies, async processing, rate limiting

- Observability - Logging, metrics, alerting as first-class concerns

- Platform Thinking - Identifies and implements reusable patterns across services

- Build vs Buy - Makes informed decisions with trade-off analysis

Leadership & Strategy :

Competency - What we expect :

- Epic Breakdown - Breaks complex epics into implementable, well-scoped chunks

- Design Review - Reviews SDE1/SDE2 designs for scalability and fault tolerance

- Product Collaboration - Works with PMs to clarify ambiguity and negotiate scope

- Technical Decisions - Drives technical decisions for a domain

- Technical Debt - Identifies debt and advocates with business justification

Team Impact

Competency - What we expect :

- Formal Mentorship - Actively develops SDE1/SDE2 engineers

- Unblocking - Proactively unblocks team members

- Process Improvement - Raises code quality standards and team processes

- Incident Management - Leads incident response and root cause analysis