ABOUT KEKA
Keka HR is redefining how businesses across the globe manage their most valuable asset — their people. With over 10,000 companies trusting our platform and a product that has earned one of the highest customer satisfaction scores in the HR technology space, we are at an inflection point. We need engineers who don’t just write code they architect the future.
As a Senior Software Engineer at Keka, you won’t just be closing tickets — you’ll be building the product that thousands of businesses run on every day. This is an opportunity to take real ownership, solve genuinely hard problems, and grow into a technical leader alongside some of the best engineers in the industry.
WHY KEKA
- Greenfield at Scale — Build and own foundational systems from the ground up — multi-tenant architecture, distributed workflows, real-time event-driven pipelines — while serving millions of end-users across global enterprises.
- Technical Depth, Not Just Breadth - You’ll tackle problems that demand mastery of distributed systems theory, not just framework knowledge. Think consensus protocols, CQRS at scale, eventually consistent data models, and zero-downtime migrations across continents.
- Founder-Led, Engineer-First Culture - Keka was built by engineers who believe great software changes industries. Technical excellence isn’t a talking point here — it’s how decisions are made. You’ll have direct access to leadership and the mandate to drive architectural decisions.
- Hyper-Growth with Enterprise DNA - We combine the speed and ambition of a high-growth startup with the engineering rigour required to serve Fortune 500 companies. You get the best of both worlds — move fast and build things that last.
- Impact at a Category-Defining Moment - Keka is building the operating system for the modern workforce. The systems you architect today will underpin how millions of people experience work. This is a once-in-a-career platform play.
THE ROLE
This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You will be a core engineer on a single squad — the person your team trusts to take a feature from requirement to production and make it work well. You lead through the quality of your code, your designs, and the way you help the engineers around you. There are no direct reports attached to this role.
Your scope is the features and modules your squad owns. You work closely with your Lead Software Engineer on larger design decisions, and you are measured by the quality of what you ship and how reliably it runs in production.
WHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Own the end-to-end delivery of features and modules within your squad — from understanding requirements to design, build, release, and support.
- Write production code every sprint across the full stack — building clean, responsive user interfaces as well as the backend services and APIs behind them.
- Prepare clear low-level designs and contribute to your squad’s system design discussions, applying sound object-oriented principles and proven design patterns.
- Build and maintain APIs, data models, and background workflows — keeping them well-structured, well-tested, and easy for other engineers to work with.
- Develop reusable components and libraries that help your squad build faster and more consistently.
- Keep what you build fast and dependable — profiling performance, optimising slow paths, and making sure features hold up as usage grows.
- Support production quality: add the right logging and monitoring, help respond to incidents, debug issues, and contribute to root-cause analyses and lasting fixes.
- Uphold the engineering bar in your squad — meaningful tests, thoughtful code reviews, and healthy CI/CD and deployment practices.
- Mentor junior engineers through pairing and code reviews, helping them grow in confidence and craft.
- Collaborate closely with your Product Manager, Designer, and Lead Software Engineer to clarify scope, flag technical risk early, and make pragmatic trade-offs.
- Build proofs of concept to explore new approaches and technologies, and bring back clear recommendations to the squad.
- Help reduce technical debt — spotting code that needs attention and improving it as part of everyday work.
TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES REQUIRED
- Design Fundamentals Strong grasp of object-oriented design, SOLID principles, and design patterns. Able to turn a feature into a clean low-level design and explain the trade-offs behind it.
- Backend Engineering Solid hands-on experience with at least one modern backend language and framework — building services and APIs with clean code, good test coverage, and a habit of refactoring.
- Frontend Engineering Hands-on experience building responsive, accessible, pixel-accurate user interfaces with a modern frontend framework, with attention to performance across devices.
- Data & Storage Practical experience with relational databases — schema design, writing and optimising queries — along with exposure to at least one NoSQL or caching layer.
- Asynchronous Processing Working familiarity with queues, background jobs, or messaging systems for work that runs outside the request cycle.
- APIs & Integration Experience building and maintaining REST APIs and integrating frontend applications and services with them reliably.
- Reliability & Performance Comfortable using logs, metrics, and profiling tools to debug production issues, find bottlenecks, and fix them.
- Cloud & Deployment Working knowledge of cloud platforms, source control, and CI/CD pipelines — enough to build, ship, and support your own features.
- Security & Data Handling Good understanding of authentication, authorisation, and handling customer data responsibly in a multi-tenant product.
- Technical Communication — Able to explain your design clearly, write concise technical documentation, and contribute constructively to design reviews.
QUALIFICATIONS
- 3–5 years of professional experience building and running production software used by real customers.
- Experience delivering features end to end design, build, test, ship, and support in production.
- Strong computer science fundamentals data structures, algorithms, and databases — applied as everyday working tools rather than interview trivia.
- Comfortable working across the stack and quick to pick up new languages and tools. You choose the right tool for the problem rather than defending a favourite.
- A track record of shipping you have taken features to production and taken responsibility for how they perform.
- Experience working in an agile squad alongside Product and Design, with a healthy respect for delivery timelines.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and the ability to work independently as well as part of a team.
- B.Tech / M.Tech / MS in Computer Science, or equivalent depth built through hands-on system-building.
WHAT SETS YOU APART
- Experience across both fast-moving startups and larger, process-driven companies — you understand the need for speed as well as the value of engineering discipline.
- Experience with multi-tenant SaaS products, particularly in regulated domains like HR, fintech, or healthcare.
- Exposure to microservices, event-driven, or high-throughput systems.
- Experience with test-driven development and a strong instinct for writing maintainable, well-tested code.
- You have mentored junior engineers or interns and enjoy helping others grow.
- Open-source contributions, technical writing, or talks at meetups and conferences.
JOIN US
The best engineers don’t just look for a job they look for a problem worth solving and a team capable of solving it. At Keka, you’ll find both. We are building the infrastructure that will power how the modern workforce operates, and we need people who care as much about how a system runs a year from now as about how it ships this sprint.
If you want real ownership of what you build, a squad that ships, and a clear path to grow into a technical leader we want to talk to you.