About the role: Our team is looking for a hands-on Tech Lead to own the technical direction of our backend platform. You will design and build scalable services, guide a team of engineers, and take end-to-end ownership from architecture through deployment and operations. This is a player-coach role: you will still write code every day while setting the technical bar for the team What we're looking for Must have: • 5+ years of software engineering experience, primarily on backend systems. • Strong hands-on expertise in Node.js (TypeScript is a plus). • Solid grounding in relational databases (PostgreSQL / MySQL): schema design, indexing, query optimisation. • Production experience with MongoDB and Redis. • Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerised deployments. • Hands-on DevOps experience on AWS or Azure: compute, networking, IAM, managed databases, CI/CD pipelines. • Track record of leading technical design and mentoring engineers, formally or informally. • Strong fundamentals in system design, distributed systems, and API design. • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 institution. Good to have: • Python experience for scripting, data pipelines, or services. • Exposure to AI/ML: integrating LLM APIs, building RAG or agentic workflows, or working with ML teams on productionising models. • Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, or Bicep). • Experience with message queues and event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS). • Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry). • Prior experience in a fast-growing product company or startup. Who you are • You lead by example and are comfortable being the most hands-on engineer in the room. • You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike. • You balance long-term architecture with shipping iteratively. • You take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.