Lead Software Engineer

Overview

Bangalore, India (Hybrid)

About Us

Sense is transforming the way companies hire with AI-powered technology designed to bring unprecedented speed, precision, and personalization to every step of the recruiting process. Our mission is to reimagine how organizations engage with talent—creating faster, smarter, and more human experiences for employers, recruiters, and job seekers alike. Founded in 2015, Sense is a high-growth HR Tech SaaS company serving over 1,000 customers worldwide. With 250+ team members and backing from Google Ventures, SoftBank, Accel, and Avataar Ventures, we've scaled rapidly and continue to lead innovation in talent engagement and automation.

About The Role

At Sense, our Chatbot Team builds highly intuitive and performant conversational agents that enhance the recruiting experience. As a Lead Software Engineer, you will be the technical anchor of the team, designing the automated "intelligence" that powers sophisticated, multi-turn interactions for millions of candidates.

You will own the end-to-end architectural vision—from initial design to global deployment—optimizing high-throughput communication pipelines to ensure our platform remains a leader in the HR Tech space. While you will oversee the execution of features, your primary focus is on the structural integrity, scalability, and long-term technical health of our backend ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• System Architecture: Lead the design and implementation of robust, high-scale backend services, ensuring they meet strict performance and reliability SLAs.
• Engineering Excellence: Define and maintain high engineering standards by writing clean, testable code and leading rigorous peer code reviews.
• Distributed Systems Optimization: Build and maintain high-throughput pipelines that handle asynchronous communication at scale with minimal latency.
• Strategic Observability: Establish the strategy for monitoring agent performance and LLM health using tools like Datadog and Arize AI, leading the triage of systemic issues.
• Technical Roadmap: Proactively identify and resolve architectural bottlenecks and technical debts to ensure long-term stability and "Customer Delight".
• Technical Leadership: Act as a primary driver of the team’s mission, mentoring other engineers and functioning as the technical authority on backend patterns and distributed systems.
  
  

• Experience: 5–10 years of progressive software development experience, with a proven track record of architecting and operating scalable, distributed backend systems.
• Distributed Systems Mastery: Expert-level mastery in building and scaling backend services within a distributed environment.
• Deep understanding of Web Frameworks (e.g., Flask) and their internal mechanics.
• Strong proficiency in Messaging Brokers (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) for managing high-throughput asynchronous communication.
• Advanced knowledge of Relational Databases (e.g., MySQL) including schema design, query optimization, and scaling strategies.
• Experience implementing Distributed Caching (e.g., Redis, Memcached) to reduce latency and improve system performance.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Significant experience with AWS for deploying and managing backend services, data infrastructure, and serverless architectures.
• Performance Management: Proven experience with APM tools like Datadog, New Relic, or similar to monitor and tune system health.
• Problem-Solving: A "product-first" engineering mindset—you build to solve the user's underlying problem, not just to meet a technical spec.
• Communication: Excellent communication and collaboration skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
  

• Programming in Python: Proficiency in Python is a plus.
• LLM Observability: Familiarity with tools like Arize AI, or LangSmith.
• Multi-Agent Frameworks: Prior knowledge of or experience working with frameworks like CrewAI or LangGraph.
  
  

• Hybrid Model: This role is based out of our Bangalore office. We value in-person collaboration and follow a policy of working from the office, with an allowance of 12 WFH (Work From Home) days per quarter.
  
  

• Equity
• Medical insurance for employees and dependents
• Quarterly Professional Development allowance
• Company Wellness Days (On months without holidays, you are still given a 3-day weekend)
  
  

Sense is an equal-opportunity employer. We believe that diversity, inclusion, and belonging are integral to our success and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, age, or any other basis protected by law. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.