Software Development Engineer III (Backend)

## About GoKwik
GoKwik is a growth operating system built to maximise D2C and eCommerce GMV. From checkout optimisation and reducing return-to-origin (RTO) to payments, retention, and post-purchase engagement, we help brands scale profitably. Today, GoKwik powers 15,000+ merchants globally and processes $2B+ in GMV annually. Backed by RTP Global, Z47, Peak XV, and Think Investments, we are building AI-led infrastructure to enable faster, smarter commerce outcomes for brands worldwide.
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## Why This Role Matters
We are looking for a Software Development Engineer III to lead the design, development, and scaling of backend systems powering KwikEngage, GoKwik’s commerce engagement suite. The role focuses on customer engagement, messaging, campaign execution, automation, and customer data processing. You will work hands-on with Go and Node.js to build reliable, high-performance distributed systems, make architectural decisions, and drive complex engineering initiatives from design through production. You will also mentor engineers, improve system reliability, and contribute to AI-powered product development while maintaining high standards for code quality, security, and operational excellence.
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What You’ll Own

- Backend Architecture and Development: Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services using Go and Node.js/TypeScript, making architectural decisions that balance performance, reliability, complexity, and cost.
- Distributed Systems and Event Processing: Build and maintain event-driven infrastructure using Kafka or Redpanda, including partitioning, message ordering, delivery guarantees, idempotency, retries, replay, backpressure, and schema evolution.
- Messaging and Campaign Infrastructure: Design reliable campaign execution, messaging orchestration, and automation workflows, including scheduling, rate limiting, failure recovery, and background processing.
- API and Integration Reliability: Develop resilient APIs and webhook integrations that handle duplicate events, out-of-order delivery, third-party failures, and partial processing.
- Data Architecture and Processing: Design data models and access patterns across ClickHouse, MongoDB, Amazon RDS, and Redis. Build customer-event ingestion, identity resolution, segmentation, and analytical pipelines.
- Scalability and Multi-Tenancy: Design systems that support multiple merchants while maintaining data isolation, predictable performance, and effective workload management during traffic spikes.
- Cloud Infrastructure and Production Readiness: Own production readiness on AWS, including capacity planning, observability, safe deployments, backward compatibility, disaster recovery, and infrastructure cost optimisation.
- Production Reliability: Lead complex debugging and incident resolution, identify root causes, and implement long-term improvements to prevent recurring production issues.
- Technical Leadership: Lead architecture and design reviews, document technical decisions, establish engineering standards, and communicate risks and trade-offs to engineering and product stakeholders.
- Mentoring and Collaboration: Mentor engineers, review code, and drive cross-functional engineering initiatives from planning through execution.
- AI-Assisted Engineering: Use AI tools for development, testing, refactoring, and debugging. Ensure generated code is properly validated for correctness, security, and maintainability.
- AI-Powered Product Development: Contribute to AI- and LLM-powered product capabilities, including evaluation, failure handling, and operational safeguards.

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Who You Are

- Have substantial experience building, scaling, and operating production backend systems, with ownership extending beyond individual features or services.
- Possess strong hands-on proficiency in both Go and Node.js, along with working knowledge of TypeScript.
- Have a deep understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, consistency, transactions, API design, and fault tolerance.
- Have practical experience with Kafka or Redpanda, including consumer lag monitoring, event replay, delivery guarantees, and safe schema evolution.
- Have experience with ClickHouse, including analytical data modelling, ingestion patterns, and query optimisation.
- Understand MongoDB, including document modelling, indexing, and performance optimisation at scale.
- Have strong experience with relational databases, including Amazon RDS, transactions, schema migrations, indexing, and query tuning.
- Have practical experience using Redis for caching, expiry management, coordination, and queue-backed workloads.
- Have experience deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting production systems on AWS.
- Have built and operated reliable background jobs and workers using Bull, BullMQ, or equivalent technologies.
- Can identify bottlenecks across application code, queues, databases, and infrastructure and demonstrate improvements through measurable results.
- Have experience implementing incremental migrations and architectural changes without disrupting production systems.
- Demonstrate sound engineering judgement and the ability to balance technical complexity with business requirements.
- Have proven technical leadership experience through architecture decisions, design reviews, code reviews, mentoring, and cross-team delivery.
- Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, risks, and execution plans clearly to engineering and product stakeholders.

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## Why GoKwik
At GoKwik, you will build the backend infrastructure powering customer engagement and commerce growth for leading D2C brands. You will solve complex distributed systems challenges, work with high-throughput data and messaging infrastructure, and contribute to AI-powered products. The role offers an opportunity to shape technical architecture, mentor engineers, influence engineering standards, and build reliable systems that support GoKwik’s continued growth.