About Pocket FM
Pocket FM is India’s leading audio entertainment platform, powering a new generation of storytelling through audiobooks, audio series, and podcasts across multiple languages. With millions of monthly active users and a vast creator community, we are redefining how content is consumed in the audio-first world.
Role Overview
We are seeking a highly skilled Backend Staff Engineer to drive significant business impact through exceptional technical execution and leadership. This is a hands-on, results-oriented role where you'll be responsible for building robust backend systems that directly translate to measurable business outcomes.
Key Expectations
- Architect, build, and maintain highly scalable backend services and microservices using Python or Golang, serving as the technical foundation for critical business operations.
- Expand technical expertise beyond core backend development by actively learning and contributing to projects with SRE and data engineering overlap. While your primary focus remains backend technology, you'll be expected to develop strong proficiency in infrastructure and data engineering principles to design truly scalable, end-to-end systems.
- Ensure exceptional system performance and reliability with hands-on experience in alerts, monitoring, and observability using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, and similar tools. Your performance will be directly evaluated based on production stability and scalability metrics.
- Master and leverage cutting-edge cloud infrastructure (primarily AWS), containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), sophisticated CI / CD pipelines, and comprehensive monitoring solutions.
- Elevate engineering excellence across the organization by mentoring and influencing 20-30 developers through strategic code reviews, establishing robust best practices in object-oriented programming, software design patterns, and maintaining the highest standards of engineering rigor.
- Champion cross-functional collaboration by working seamlessly with product, design, analytics, and operations teams to deliver exceptional user experiences that translate directly into quantifiable business impact and growth.
- Spearhead continuous technological innovation by proactively researching emerging trends in cloud computing, backend architecture, and data engineering, then strategically implementing these advances to enhance product capabilities and accelerate feature delivery timelines.
- Demonstrate technical leadership through action by maintaining hands-on involvement in critical development work, setting the standard for code quality, architectural decisions, and problem-solving approaches expected across the entire engineering organization.
Requirements and Qualifications
8+ years of software or backend development experience , including substantial work in Java or Golang (preferred).Strong computer science fundamentals and thorough understanding of distributed systems , including algorithms, object-oriented design, operating systems, networking, and deep knowledge of operational challenges and complexities in distributed environments.Proven expertise in building scalable, high-performance backend services for B2C mobile applications at massive scale and low latency, with demonstrated ability to understand and implement non-functional requirements (NFRs) essential for delivering world-class consumer products.Deep familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and microservices architecture.Experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and building CI / CD pipelines is a must.Experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) and strong debugging and incident management capabilitiesHands-on with databases and messaging systems : RDBMS (Mysql / PostgreSQL),Redis, Kafka. Knowledge of NoSql databases is a plus.Familiarity with analytics and workflow tools like Spark Streaming, Airflow, Redshift is a plus.Excellent communication and collaboration skills , especially in distributed and cross-functional teams.