Software Engineer Backend

About the Company

Job Title: Software Engineer - Backend

Location: Bangalore

About upGrad: Founded in 2015, upGrad is Asia’s largest integrated Learning, Skilling, Workforce Development, and Placement company. Its offerings include online and hybrid degrees, study abroad programs, certifications, bootcamps, and doctorates for working professionals. Through its B2B arm, upGrad also provides enterprise training, recruitment, and staffing services. With 10M+ learners across 100+ countries, 300+ global university partners, 2500+ pathway connections, and 20,000+ recruitment partners, upGrad continues to empower careers worldwide. Learn more at www.upgrad.com.

About the Role

Role Summary

We’re looking for a Backend Software Engineer who is a builder, not just a backend developer. The ideal candidate will bring strong engineering fundamentals, move with pace, question decisions constructively, and understand why something should be built before deciding how to build it. Backend will be the primary focus, but boundaries are not rigid. The role requires working across areas when needed, collaborating cross-functionally, and picking up problems outside the immediate area when the product requires it. The candidate should have hands-on experience with Java and/or JavaScript/TypeScript, production experience with Spring/Spring Boot or Node.js, and a strong understanding of APIs, distributed systems, production-grade system design, SQL and NoSQL databases, and cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

Key ResponsibilitiesBuild with ownership — take problems from idea and design through production, not just from ticket to code.Think from first principles — question assumptions, understand trade-offs, and make deliberate engineering choices.Keep it lean — prefer simple, maintainable architecture and continuously look for opportunities to optimise infrastructure and cost.Design for tomorrow — think about scalability, extensibility, reliability and maintainability without over-engineering for imaginary scale.Understand distributed systems, including service boundaries, communication patterns, failure handling, and when a microservice actually needs to exist.Think deliberately about tenancy, data isolation, partitioning and access patterns.Own performance through query optimisation, API performance, caching, concurrency and identifying bottlenecks.Think product, not tickets — understand the expected outcome and challenge a solution when there is a better way to achieve it.Move with pace — make informed decisions, ship, measure and iterate.Be cross-functional when needed. The problem matters more than where the boundary of the role happens to be.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications3–5 years of software engineering experience with strong backend engineering fundamentals.Hands-on experience with Java and/or JavaScript/TypeScript.Experience building production systems using Spring/Spring Boot or Node.js.Strong understanding of APIs, distributed systems and production-grade system design.Experience with SQL databases, including schema design, indexing and query optimisation.Good understanding of NoSQL concepts, including partitioning, consistency, access patterns and data modelling.Experience with at least one cloud platform — AWS, GCP or equivalent.Ability to reason about scale, reliability, performance, maintainability and cost while making technical decisions.

Required Skills

Preferred Technical SkillsJava / Spring / Spring BootJavaScript / TypeScript / Node.jsAPI developmentDistributed systemsProduction-grade system designSQL database design, indexing and query optimisationNoSQL concepts including partitioning, consistency, access patterns and data modellingCloud platforms such as AWS, GCP or equivalentCaching and concurrencyPerformance and bottleneck identificationUnderstanding of service boundaries, communication patterns and failure handlingUnderstanding of tenancy and data isolation

Preferred Skills

Functional CompetenciesStrong backend engineering fundamentals.Ability to think from first principles and make deliberate technical choices.Strong understanding of scalability, reliability, performance, maintainability and cost.Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.Ability to understand the expected product outcome and challenge solutions constructively.Strong ownership from problem definition and design through production.Ability to work effectively across technical and functional boundaries.Ability to make informed decisions, ship, measure and iterate.Strong engineering judgement and willingness to question assumptions.AI is Part of the Engineering ToolkitWe expect you to use AI effectively to build faster and better — for exploration, coding, debugging, testing, reviewing and understanding unfamiliar systems.But we’re not looking for a prompt hero.You should understand what you’re shipping, validate what AI produces, question its assumptions and own the engineering decisions behind it.Success ProfileThe successful candidate will:Demonstrate strong backend engineering fundamentals and take end-to-end ownership of problems.Build simple, maintainable and scalable systems without unnecessary complexity.Make sound engineering decisions across APIs, distributed systems, databases, performance and cloud.Identify and address performance bottlenecks across queries, APIs, caching and concurrency.Think deliberately about tenancy, data isolation, partitioning and access patterns.Understand the product outcome behind the technical problem and challenge solutions when appropriate.Balance scale, reliability, performance, maintainability and cost when making technical decisions.Work effectively across boundaries and collaborate with other teams when the problem requires it.Use AI effectively while maintaining ownership and engineering judgement.The Engineering MindsetSimple over clever. Outcomes