Principal Engineer (Backend) (Mumbai)

This role is for one of the Weekday's clients Min Experience: 7 years Location: Mumbai JobType: full-time We are seeking a technically strong and experienced Principal Engineer Backend to lead development initiatives and drive architectural excellence. In this role, you will guide senior engineers, shape system design decisions, and build scalable, high-performance platforms while remaining hands-on with development. You will play a critical role in designing and delivering secure, reliable, and elegant backend systems that exceed client expectations. The role involves solving scalability challenges, optimizing performance across large data systems, and collaborating cross-functionally to build intelligent, contemporary applications. You bring deep expertise in Java-based backend development, a strong design sensibility focused on simplicity and usability, and a bias toward leveraging open-source technologies and proven frameworks. You have successfully delivered applications with robust backends and well-integrated front-end experiences, supported by strong communication and leadership skills. Key Responsibilities - Co-lead end-to-end architecture, design, and development of high-volume, low-latency, real-time event-driven systems - Define and evolve backend architecture using microservices principles - Provide technical leadership to senior engineers and collaborate across teams to assess system complexity and mitigate implementation risks - Design and deliver highly available, high-performance distributed systems - Identify bottlenecks, optimize performance, and resolve production and non-production issues - Translate business requirements and product specifications into scalable technical designs and low-level architecture - Stay current with emerging open-source technologies and industry trends, recommending relevant innovations - Maintain a hands-on approach to coding, code reviews, and technical problem-solving - Collaborate with product management and cross-functional teams to build scalable, enterprise-grade platforms Required Qualifications - Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline - 714 years of experience designing and building scalable, distributed enterprise applications - Strong expertise in Java/J2EE, JPA, Spring Framework, and RESTful web services - Excellent coding skills in Java with deep understanding of object-oriented design - Experience working with and optimizing large data systems such as MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Redis - Familiarity with event streaming and messaging systems such as Kafka - Experience deploying applications on cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure, including managed services - Solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles - Proven experience leading large-scale projects within Agile SDLC environments Preferred Qualifications - Exposure to front-end technologies including HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, AngularJS, React, and D3.js - Experience building full-stack systems with strong backendfrontend integration - Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and foster a high-performance engineering culture Core Technical Skills - Java - Spring Framework - MySQL - MongoDB - Elasticsearch - Redis - Kafka - HTML & CSS - React.js - AngularJS .