About the role
The core responsibilities for the job include the following:
Software Development Fundamentals:
- Programming Proficiency: Strong foundation in at least one backend language (Python, Java, Go, or Node.js ) to review code, unblock teams, and make informed decisions.
- Code Review and Quality: Ability to evaluate PRs, enforce coding standards, and identify technical debt.
- Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC): Deep understanding of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and release management processes.
SaaS Architecture and Platform Knowledge:
- Multi-Tenancy Architecture: Understanding of tenant isolation, shared vs. dedicated infrastructure, and data partitioning strategies.
- Microservices and Monolith: Trade-offs - When to decompose and how to manage service boundaries.
- SaaS Metrics: Understanding how technical decisions impact MRR, churn, uptime SLAs, and customer onboarding speed.
- API-First Thinking: RESTful APIs, webhooks, third-party integrations, and developer experience (DX).
Cloud and Infrastructure:
- Cloud Platforms: Working knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP (compute, storage, networking, cost management).
- CI/CD and DevOps: Familiarity with deployment pipelines, feature flags, and blue-green/canary deployments.
- Containerisation: Docker, Kubernetes, and orchestration strategies.
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation (enough to guide decisions, not necessarily hands-on daily).
Data and Analytics:
- Database Management: Understanding of relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (DynamoDB, MongoDB, Redis) trade-offs.
- Data Pipelines and Analytics: Familiarity with ETL processes, data warehousing, and event-driven architectures.
- Product Analytics: Instrumentation, A/B testing frameworks, and usage tracking.
Security and Compliance:
- Application Security: OWASP top 10 secure coding practices and vulnerability management.
- Identity and Access: Management SSO, OAuth2 RBAC, and SCIM provisioning (critical in SaaS).
- Compliance: Frameworks SOC 2 GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 (depending on industry).
- Data Privacy: Encryption, data residency, and tenant data isolation.
Reliability and Scalability:
- Observability: Monitoring, alerting, distributed tracing (Datadog, New Relic, PagerDuty).
- Incident Management: On-call rotations, runbooks, post-mortems, and blameless culture.
- Performance and Scalability: Load testing, auto-scaling, and capacity planning.
- SLA/SLO Management: Defining and tracking uptime commitments (99.9%, 99.99%).
Delivery and Execution:
- Technical Roadmapping: Balancing feature development, tech debt, and platform investments.
- Estimation and Planning: Breaking epics into deliverables and managing cross-team dependencies.
- Build vs. Buy Decisions: Evaluating third-party tools, vendor management, and integration costs.
- Feature Flagging and Experimentation: Controlled rollouts, A/B testing, and progressive delivery.
People and Process:
- Technical Hiring: Designing system-design interviews, evaluating coding assessments, and calibrating levels.
- Architecture Reviews: Leading design reviews, ADRs, and RFCs.
- Tech Debt Management: Prioritising refactoring and communicating trade-offs to stakeholders.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Translating between product, design, and engineering in technical terms.