Software Development Engineer IV

Job description

Porter is building the operating system for intra-city logistics inIndia. With ~20 million orders per month , 500K+ daily-active drivers ,and rapid scale ahead ( 1.5x growth expected next year ), we solve complexreal-world problems at massive scale, balancing speed, reliability, and costefficiency in a highly operational environment. As an SDE 4 at Porter , you own a domain or platformspanning multiple services and set its technical direction. Youllarchitect systems that hold up at Porter scale, influence priorities acrossteams without authority, and drive quarter-long technical roadmaps mapped tobusiness KPIs . Youll raise the engineering bar through design reviews,mentorship of senior and junior engineers, and active participation in hiring and shape how the team reasons about reliability, cost, and trade-offs. Youthink from first principles , use AI as a force multiplier (andhelp others use it well), and ship systems that are reliable, observable, andeconomically sustainable at scale. Architect and own multi-servicesystems and platforms handling millions of transactions reasoningexplicitly about service contracts, failure modes across boundaries, andcross-service observability. Drive high-level andlow-level design across services including build/buy/defer decisionsframed by ROI and contribution-margin. Perform capacity planning,back-of-the-envelope calculations, and identify system bottlenecks early atsingle-service and cross-service scope. Set technical direction foryour domain via quarter-long roadmaps mapped to business KPIs; sequencedelivery against tech-debt and operational risk. Lead engineering operations foryour domain: SLIs/SLAs, MTTR/MTTA, automated remediation (auto-retry,throttles, autoscaling guards), zero-downtime migrations, andcost-per-transaction awareness. Write clean, maintainable, andtestable production-grade code. Apply SOLID, design patterns,and modern engineering practices fluently. Treat code as mentorship strong naming, non-obvious comments only, test coverage choices that signalintent, PR-worthy from the first commit. Design for extensibility underevolving requirements; preserve interfaces as the system grows through 23xchanges. Use AI to accelerate delivery, validateits outputs critically , and introduce AI workflows that lift the team notjust yourself. Own end-to-end delivery fromidea to system design to production to long-term operation across multipleservices and quarters. Drive projects with highautonomy, navigate ambiguity by translating fuzzy business asks into sequencedplans with measurable outcomes, and deliver under tight timelines. Lead operational reviews,incident management, and system improvements for your domain own postmortems,drive MTTR/MTTA down, and build the automation that prevents repeats. Run time-boxed experiments andDevEx upgrades (faster CI, parallel builds, standardized playbooks) withmeasurable impact. Align teams around sharedtechnical direction surface integration gaps, organize cross-team forums, andmediate priority conflicts in Porters favor. Partner deeply with Product,Data, and Business stakeholders; turn fuzzy operational realities into cleartechnical trade-offs and build/buy/defer decisions. Mentor engineers across grades set clear objectives for those you mentor, give specific, behaviour-basedfeedback, and surface early performance signals with measured action. Raise the bar in hiring owninterview debriefs, calibrate the panel, and contribute to onboarding andinterview-loop improvements. 7+ years of softwaredevelopment experience (SDE 4 or equivalent seniorIC role). Proven track record owning andscaling production systems end-to-end across multiple services/domains andmultiple quarters. Demonstrated experience settingtechnical direction for a domain or platform and influencing teams withoutdirect authority (via design reviews, RFCs, shared infra, hiring debriefs). Experience working infast-paced, high-ownership environments (startups or scale-ups preferred). Strong fundamentals in datastructures, algorithms, and object-oriented design . Hands-on experience designingsystems at scale across services/domains, not just within one with explicitreasoning about contracts, failure modes, and cross-service observability. Deep familiarity with modernbackend stacks, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure; comfort makingbuild/buy/defer decisions with ROI framing. Strong engineering operationschops: SLIs/SLAs, incident leadership, MTTR/MTTA improvement, capacity planningacross services, and cost-per-transaction awareness. Use AI as a productivity forcemultiplier, not a crutch; introduce AI workflows that lift the broader teamsvelocity. Strong judgment to validateAI-generated outputs, mentor others on when (and when not) to use AI, andreason independently when AI is wrong. Reason from first principles onambiguous business problems and architectural trade-offs at a quarter horizon not just within a single feature or sprint. Strong sense of ownership andaccountability that extends to your domains health (Own It). User-first thinking with deepunderstanding of business impact comfortable making build/buy/defertrade-offs with ROI in mind (User Obsession, Business Product Acumen). Bias for action under ambiguity drive clarification, sequence delivery, and ship under tight timelines (KeepMoving). Collaborate across teamswithout authority mediate priority conflicts in Porters favor, surfaceintegration gaps, and align stakeholders (Collaborate to Win). Active in mentorship and hiring set objectives for those you mentor, give specific behaviour-based