Lead Software Engineer - Systems

Company Description

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.

There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.

At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks’ customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And, over 4,500 Freshworks employees make this possible, all around the world.

Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Job Description

Overview
At Freshworks, we’re building the foundational systems that power internet-scale SaaS products. As a Lead Systems Engineer, you’ll architect services that are fast, secure, and built to last. You’ll work across products and platforms—owning design, deployment, and evolution of critical systems that impact everything from login to logs.

If you thrive on building for scale, thinking in multi-tenant architectures, and sweating the details of performance, extensibility, and fault tolerance—you’ll love this role.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop systems and APIs with reliability and modularity in mind.
• Architect services to support multi-tenant, cloud-native applications.
• Lead efforts on code optimisation, refactoring, and scaling existing systems.
• Own full lifecycle—from requirement gathering to design, implementation, and support.
• Drive best practices for OOPS, design patterns, and system scalability.
• Ensure high availability (99.99%+), security, and monitoring of production systems.
• Partner with SREs, PMs, and other tech leads to deliver platform-wide capabilities.
• Mentor 2–4 systems engineers and lead technical conversations across multiple teams.

Requirements

• Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA): Expertise in selecting optimal data structures and developing efficient, optimized code including time/space complexity trade-offs. Deep knowledge of REST APIs.
• Problem Solving & Logical Analysis: Ability to clearly articulate thought processes, decompose complex problems, and engineer effective solutions.
• Object-Oriented Design (OOD): Strong command of OOP principles, designing extensible code, and applying SOLID principles.
• System Design (High-Level Design - HLD & LLD): Proven ability to design scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant end-to-end systems, including APIs, schema, and data models.
• Exposure to RDBMS, caching strategies, distributed queues, and microservices.
• Exposure and experience with AI tools and technologies to improve efficiency
• Leadership & Collaboration: Demonstrates strong ownership, collaborates effectively, and shows potential for mentoring.
• System Design (HLD): Ability to gather requirements (functional/non-functional) and design scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, end-to-end systems.
• API & Database Design: Skilled in designing APIs, database schemas, and data models.
• Technical Communication: Excellent at conveying technical concepts and solutions clearly.
• Problem-Solving & Analysis: Strong analytical and logical reasoning for complex problem-solving.
• Code & Design Optimization: Capable of optimizing code and system designs for performance and efficiency.
• Code Review: Experienced in performing effective code reviews.
• Tech Stack: Knowledgeable about relevant technologies and adept at articulating suitable tech stacks for designs.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, DevOps tooling, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 6 to 9 years of experience in building backend systems and infrastructure.
• You’ve built systems from scratch and taken them through multiple iterations.
• Experience with RDBMS, NoSQL, and queuing systems.
• Familiarity with observability, rate limiting, multi-region deployments.
• You thrive in ambiguity and move fast without sacrificing technical depth.

Additional Information

At Freshworks, we are creating a global workplace that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion irrespective of their background, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. We are committed to providing equal opportunity for all and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer work environment that advances the goals of our employees, communities and the business.