Senior Staff Engineer - Systems

Location: Chennai, TN, India
Department: Information Technology

Job Description

Overview:

As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will serve as a core technical anchor, driving the architectural evolution of Freshworks' multi-tier SaaS platform. In this role, you will:

• Scale Platform Capabilities: Architect and deliver resilient APIs, microservices, and web-layer platform features that support complex enterprise customer scenarios while drastically improving deployment velocity, system reliability, and low-latency performance.
• Elevate Engineering Discipline: Act as a technical role model and mentor to young, ambitious engineers—fostering a culture rooted in clean coding standards, robust systems thinking, and long-term product ownership.
• Bridge Business & Technology: Partner closely with cross-functional leaders across Architecture, Product Management, Design, QA, Operations, and Customer Success to turn high-level business visions into seamlessly integrated, high-performing software solutions.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Architecture & Roadmap Execution: Own and deliver the technical roadmap for your engineering domain; design, document, and execute scalable, cost-efficient, and low-latency platform solutions.
• Hands-on Development: Write clean, maintainable, and high-performance code, building APIs and core platform features that scale seamlessly alongside Freshworks’ global growth.
• System Health & Tech Debt Management: Identify critical architectural bottlenecks and technical debt; design and drive practical, iterative refactoring plans without compromising business delivery.
• Operational Excellence & Production Leadership: Take ownership of complex production issues in distributed SaaS environments, driving deep-dive root-cause analyses (RCA) and implementing permanent preventive safeguards.
• Quality & Process Standardization: Establish rigorous engineering standards through code reviews, automated testing, and CI/CD pipeline integration to continuously raise the quality bar.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Coach and develop engineers across functions, elevating their problem-solving capabilities, systems thinking, and operational discipline.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure all platform designs and team practices strictly align with Freshworks information security standards and regulatory compliance protocols.

Qualifications

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience: 12 to 15 years of hands-on software engineering and systems/platform engineering experience within modern distributed SaaS environments.
• Architectural Ownership: Proven track record of owning end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for large-scale products or core platform infrastructure.
• Production Scale: Demonstrated history of building, shipping, and maintaining high-availability, low-latency, and high-throughput systems operating under assertive deployment schedules.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Extensive experience collaborating with and influencing multi-disciplinary teams (Product, QA, Ops, Design) to drive consensus and alignment.

Skills

• Core Backend Expertise: Expert-level mastery in Java (Spring/Spring Boot) or Python for high-scale backend services development.
• Distributed Systems Architecture: Deep proficiency in multi-tier application architecture, microservices design, RESTful APIs, messaging queues, and database layer optimization.
• CS Fundamentals: Exceptional command of data structures, algorithms, advanced Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts, and design patterns.
• SaaS Troubleshooting & Linux: Advanced knowledge of Linux internals, production debugging, log analysis, and system telemetry in distributed Cloud/SaaS setups.
• Engineering Quality & DevOps: Strong experience with CI/CD automation, unit/integration testing frameworks, and writing clean, maintainable code with minimal abstraction.
• Soft Skills & Technical Leadership: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to both technical panels and executive stakeholders.

Additional Information

At Freshworks, we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion, welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees, communities, and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Company Description

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.

There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.

Freshworks Inc. builds uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional employee and customer experiences. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, helping businesses reduce complexity, lower cost-to-serve, and deliver faster, more human support through enterprise-grade yet easy-to-use CX and IT solutions. Nearly 75,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks to power their Employee Experience (EX) and Customer Experience (CX) operations.

Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.