FDE2_AI_D_Engineer

The Technical Lead is responsible for driving the end-to-end technical design, implementation, and quality of complex, distributed systems across application, data, and platform layers. This role combines deep hands-on engineering expertise with cross-domain technical leadership, ensuring that solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.

The Technical Lead operates at the intersection of application engineering, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure, working closely with architects, Business Architects, and Technical Program Managers to translate solution intent into executable designs. The role is accountable for technical decision-making, engineering quality, and delivery feasibility across multiple workstreams.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Own the detailed technical design and decomposition of solutions across application, data, and integration layers
• Translate high-level architecture into low-level design artifacts, including service contracts, data models, and integration patterns
• Lead implementation of scalable backend services, APIs, and event-driven components
• Drive code quality through hands-on code reviews, enforcing design patterns, modularity, and maintainability
• Define and enforce engineering standards, including coding guidelines, branching strategies, and review processes
• Mentor and guide engineers across backend, frontend, data, and platform disciplines
• Collaborate with architects to validate trade-offs across performance, scalability, cost, and maintainability
• Work with TPMs to ensure technical feasibility, effort estimation, and alignment with delivery timelines
• Drive implementation of testing strategies (unit, integration, contract, and performance testing)
• Ensure CI/CD pipelines, deployment strategies, and environment management are correctly implemented
• Identify and mitigate technical risks, including scalability bottlenecks, data inconsistencies, and integration failures
• Lead troubleshooting of complex production issues, including root cause analysis across distributed systems
• Ensure systems meet non-functional requirements (NFRs) including performance, reliability, observability, and security
• Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering practices, tools, and platform capabilities

Skills & Requirements

Experience

• 6 to 10 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2–3 years in a technical leadership role
• Proven experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams across application, data, and platform layers

Application & Backend Engineering

• Strong hands-on experience in backend development (Java, Python, or similar)
• Expertise in designing and building RESTful APIs and service-based architectures
• Deep understanding of object-oriented design, SOLID principles, and design patterns
• Experience building high-throughput, low-latency systems

System Design & Architecture

• Strong expertise in distributed systems design, including microservices and service orchestration
• Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, messaging queues, async workflows)
• Ability to design for scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability
• Experience defining API contracts, service boundaries, and inter-service communication patterns

Data Engineering & Data Platforms

• Strong understanding of data modeling and schema design
• Experience working with relational and NoSQL databases
• Familiarity with data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes, and data integration patterns
• Understanding of data consistency, partitioning, and performance optimization
• Exposure to analytics platforms or data lake architectures is preferred

Cloud & DevOps

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and cloud-native services
• Strong understanding of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Experience implementing and optimizing CI/CD pipelines
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar)
• Understanding of deployment strategies (blue-green, canary releases)

Testing & Quality Engineering

• Strong understanding of testing strategies, including unit, integration, contract, and performance testing
• Experience with test automation frameworks and code coverage practices
• Ability to enforce shift-left testing practices

Security & Governance

• Understanding of application security principles, including authentication, authorization, and data protection
• Experience with IAM, OAuth2, and secure API design
• Familiarity with audit, logging, and compliance requirements

Observability & Reliability

• Experience implementing logging, monitoring, and tracing (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
• Ability to define and track SLIs, SLOs, and system health metrics
• Strong troubleshooting skills across distributed systems

Ways of Working

• Strong experience with Agile/Scrum or hybrid delivery models
• Ability to work closely with TPMs on estimation, planning, and dependency management
• Experience collaborating with Business Architects on requirement clarity and solution alignment

Soft Skills

• Strong technical leadership with the ability to influence engineering decisions across teams
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders
• Mentorship capability to develop engineers across different experience levels
• Structured problem-solving and decision-making under ambiguity
• Strong ownership mindset and accountability for delivery outcomes

Nice to Have

• Experience working on AI/ML-enabled systems or data-driven applications
• Exposure to real-time data processing or streaming architectures
• Experience in telecommunications or other large-scale enterprise environments
• Experience working in multi-vendor, globally distributed teams