Senior Software Engineer - Platform (UI)

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer - Platform (UI)

Company: Harness

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Job Type: Full-time

Category: Backend Platform Engineering / Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Date Posted: April 15, 2026

Experience Level: Senior / Staff (10+ years)

Remote Status: On-site

🚀 Role Summary

• Design, architect, and build highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and cloud-native backend systems capable of handling millions of requests per second.

• Drive operational excellence by implementing robust incident management, performance tuning, and automation strategies for complex distributed systems.

• Develop and maintain microservices using Go, Java, or Python, focusing on high availability, resilience, and efficient resource utilization.

• Ensure system reliability and observability through comprehensive logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing, leveraging industry-standard tools.

📝 Enhancement Note: The original job title is "Senior Software Engineer - Platform (UI)". However, the core responsibilities and required skills heavily emphasize backend platform engineering, distributed systems, and operational excellence, aligning more closely with a Senior/Staff Backend Platform Engineer or a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) role focused on backend infrastructure. The "(UI)" suffix appears to be a misclassification or a remnant from a different role; the description focuses exclusively on backend systems and does not mention UI development. Therefore, the category has been adjusted to reflect the actual nature of the role. The experience level is inferred as Senior/Staff due to the "10-14 years of experience" requirement and the emphasis on architectural design and leadership.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Architect and develop scalable, fault-tolerant backend systems designed to manage high-volume, low-latency traffic, processing millions of requests per second.

• Implement and maintain microservices using programming languages such as Go, Java, or Python, ensuring high availability, resilience, and efficient integration within a cloud-native ecosystem.

• Deploy, manage, and optimize applications on leading cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) utilizing container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS).

• Design and implement event-driven architectures leveraging distributed messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka, Pulsar, or RabbitMQ to handle asynchronous workloads effectively.

• Define, implement, and monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) to ensure system performance and reliability meet defined targets.

• Lead incident response efforts, establish robust alerting and escalation processes, and conduct thorough post-incident analyses (Postmortems and Root Cause Analysis - RCA) to drive corrective actions and prevent recurrence.

• Implement and refine observability practices, including comprehensive logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing solutions using tools like Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and Datadog.

• Diagnose and optimize system performance, focusing on reducing latency, increasing throughput, and minimizing memory utilization in large-scale distributed environments.

• Design and implement highly concurrent, multithreaded backend services to facilitate parallel processing and enhance system efficiency.

• Optimize the performance of both SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra, DynamoDB, Redis, MongoDB) database solutions, ensuring efficient data retrieval and storage.

• Implement and enforce security best practices for APIs, including authentication, authorization, and ensure compliance with relevant industry standards such as SOC2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, guiding them on best practices for platform engineering, microservices development, and distributed systems design through code reviews and knowledge sharing.

• Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including cloud engineering, security, and product engineering, to align platform capabilities with strategic business objectives and product roadmaps.

📝 Enhancement Note: The original job description provides a detailed list of responsibilities. This section expands on those points, adding specific operational context and keywords relevant to backend platform engineering and SRE roles. For instance, quantifying "millions of requests per second" and specifying the purpose of event-driven architectures adds depth. The emphasis on SLAs/SLIs/SLOs and post-incident analysis is crucial for operational excellence.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education:

Experience:

• 10 to 14 years of professional experience in backend platform engineering, with a strong focus on distributed systems, microservices architecture, and cloud-native development.

• Proven track record of designing, building, and operating highly available and scalable backend systems in production environments.

Required Skills:

• Proficient programming expertise in at least one of the following languages: Go, Java, or Python, with a strong understanding of multithreading and concurrency patterns.

• Deep expertise in containerization and orchestration technologies, specifically Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS), and experience with service meshes like Istio or Linkerd.

• Hands-on experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and their associated services for building and deploying scalable applications.

• Strong understanding and practical application of distributed messaging systems such as Kafka, Pulsar, or RabbitMQ.

• Proficient in defining, implementing, and utilizing observability tools and practices, including logging, monitoring, and distributed tracing (e.g., Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Datadog).

• Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines, utilizing tools like Terraform, Pulumi, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions.

• Proven ability to manage production incidents effectively, including on-call responsibilities, incident response, and post-incident analysis (RCA).

Preferred Skills:

• Expertise in designing and optimizing RESTful APIs, gRPC services, and potentially GraphQL endpoints, with a focus on performance tuning and best practices.

• Experience with database performance tuning and optimization for both relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra, DynamoDB, Redis, MongoDB) databases.

• Familiarity with API security best practices, authentication, and authorization mechanisms.

• Understanding of compliance frameworks such as SOC2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.

• Experience with advanced CI/CD concepts and tools for automated testing, deployment, and release management.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "About You" section in the original description has been translated into a structured "Skills & Qualifications" section. The experience requirement of "10-14 years" clearly indicates a Staff-level or senior individual contributor role, hence the "Senior / Staff" designation. Specific technical skills mentioned in the responsibilities have been integrated into the required and preferred skills lists, ensuring comprehensive coverage for operations professionals.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Showcase examples of architecting and building scalable, fault-tolerant backend systems that demonstrate an understanding of high-throughput and low-latency requirements.

• Present case studies of microservices development, highlighting the design choices, implementation details, and operational considerations for Go, Java, or Python services.

• Include documentation or descriptions of deployments on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) using Kubernetes, illustrating expertise in container orchestration and cloud-native infrastructure.

• Provide evidence of experience with event-driven architectures, detailing the use of messaging queues like Kafka or RabbitMQ for asynchronous communication and data streaming.

Process Documentation:

• Detail the process followed for designing and implementing new backend services, including requirements gathering, architectural reviews, and technology selection.

• Document the methodologies used for ensuring system reliability and resilience, such as implementing circuit breakers, graceful degradation, and auto-scaling mechanisms.

• Illustrate the process for defining and monitoring SLAs/SLIs/SLOs, including how these metrics were used to drive performance improvements and operational decisions.

• Outline the standard operating procedures for incident response, from detection and triage to resolution and post-incident analysis, emphasizing Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

📝 Enhancement Note: Given the senior level and the emphasis on operational excellence and system design, a portfolio showcasing practical experience is crucial. This section outlines what such a portfolio should contain, focusing on demonstrable achievements in system architecture, microservices, cloud deployment, observability, and incident management. The "Process Documentation" aspect emphasizes the candidate's ability to articulate and standardize their operational workflows.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range:

Benefits:

• Competitive salary package with potential for stock options or bonuses.

• Comprehensive healthcare benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.

• Flexible work schedule to accommodate work-life balance.

• Paid Time Off (PTO) and generous Parental Leave policies.

• Monthly internet reimbursement to support remote work needs (even for on-site roles, this can be a perk).

• Participation in quarterly "TGIF-Off / 4 days" (likely a shortened work week or team event).

Working Hours:

• Standard full-time working hours, estimated at 40 hours per week. The company offers a flexible work schedule, allowing for some autonomy in managing daily work hours while ensuring coverage and collaboration needs are met.

📝 Enhancement Note: The original job description lists several benefits but does not specify salary. A competitive salary range for a Staff-level engineer in Bengaluru has been estimated based on market data for similar roles and experience levels in India. The "Working Hours" inferred from the standard "Full-time" type and the mention of "Flexible work schedule."

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry:

Company Size:

Founded:

Team Structure:

• The role is for a Senior Software Engineer on the Platform team, suggesting a dedicated group focused on the foundational infrastructure and services that power Harness's broader platform.

• This team likely operates within a larger engineering organization, collaborating closely with product engineering, cloud infrastructure, and security teams.

Methodology:

• Harness emphasizes AI-driven automation and deep context across the software delivery lifecycle, guided by a Software Delivery Knowledge Graph.

• The company's approach to operations likely includes a strong focus on data analysis to drive insights, robust workflow planning and optimization for efficiency, and the implementation of automation for continuous improvement.

Company Website:

• https://www.harness.io/

📝 Enhancement Note: The company description provided details about Harness's mission, funding, and impact. This section contextualizes that information for an operations professional, highlighting the industry, scale, and likely operational methodologies at play. The mention of AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph points to a data-centric and forward-thinking operational environment.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level:

Reporting Structure:

Operations Impact:

Growth Opportunities:

• Technical Specialization: Deepen expertise in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes, and AI-driven platform engineering, becoming a go-to expert in these domains.

• Architectural Leadership: Influence the technical direction and architectural evolution of Harness's core platform services, leading design efforts for major new features or system overhauls.

• Mentorship and Team Development: Guide and mentor junior and senior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, operational rigor, and continuous learning within the Platform team and beyond.

• Cross-functional Influence: Collaborate with product management, security, and customer-facing teams to understand evolving needs and translate them into robust platform capabilities.

• Potential for Principal Engineer/Architect: With continued high performance and impact, there's a clear path towards Principal Engineer or Architect roles, focusing on even broader technical strategy and innovation.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section analyzes the career trajectory and impact of the role. The Staff Engineer level implies significant autonomy and influence. The growth opportunities are tailored to a backend platform engineering career path, emphasizing technical depth, leadership, and architectural contribution.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type:

Office Location(s):

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Environment: The office setup likely encourages interaction, whiteboarding sessions, and in-person problem-solving, which are crucial for tackling complex distributed systems challenges.

• Tools and Technology: Expect access to cutting-edge development tools, robust network infrastructure, and potentially dedicated hardware for testing and development, supporting the engineering team's productivity.

• Team Interaction: Proximity to other engineering teams (Cloud Engineering, Security, Product Engineering) facilitates seamless communication and rapid problem resolution, crucial for an on-site role.

Work Schedule:

• The role is full-time with a standard 40-hour work week. While the office is the primary location, the mention of a "Flexible work schedule" suggests that employees may have some latitude in structuring their daily working hours, provided they meet team collaboration needs and project deadlines.

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Location" and "Work Environment" details from the original input are consolidated here. The on-site nature in a major tech hub like Bengaluru is highlighted, along with the expected collaborative and technologically equipped workspace. The "flexible work schedule" is noted as a potential perk within the on-site framework.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A recruiter or hiring manager will likely conduct an initial phone screen to assess basic qualifications, experience, and cultural fit.

• Technical Interviews (Multiple Rounds): Expect several rounds of in-depth technical interviews focusing on:

  • System Design: Candidates will be asked to design scalable, distributed systems, addressing aspects like data modeling, API design, fault tolerance, and performance. This is where portfolio examples are invaluable.
  • Coding Challenges: Live coding sessions or take-home assignments in Go, Java, or Python, focusing on algorithms, data structures, concurrency, and problem-solving in a backend context.
  • Operational Excellence: Questions probing experience with incident management, observability, performance tuning, and troubleshooting production issues. Expect scenarios requiring detailed explanations of past incidents and resolutions.
  • Kubernetes & Cloud: Questions assessing deep understanding of Kubernetes architecture, deployment strategies, and cloud infrastructure services.

• Manager/Team Interview: A conversation with the hiring manager and potentially senior team members to discuss team dynamics, project alignment, and leadership potential.

• Final Round/Executive Interview: May involve a discussion with a senior engineering leader or VP to ensure strategic alignment and high-level fit.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Curate Select Projects: Focus on 2-3 significant projects that best showcase your skills in distributed systems, microservices, scalability, and operational excellence.

• Structure Case Studies: For each project, clearly outline the problem statement, your role and contributions, the technical challenges faced, the solutions implemented (architectural diagrams are helpful), the technologies used, and the measurable outcomes (e.g., performance improvements, cost savings, increased reliability).

• Highlight Operational Impact: Emphasize how your work improved system reliability, reduced incidents, enhanced observability, or optimized performance. Quantify results wherever possible.

• Demonstrate Process: Be prepared to walk through your design and implementation process, explaining your decision-making rationale, trade-offs considered, and how you approached testing and deployment.

• Technical Depth: Be ready to dive deep into the technical details of your projects, explaining complex concepts clearly and concisely.

Challenge Preparation:

• System Design Practice: Practice designing complex systems (e.g., a distributed cache, a real-time analytics pipeline, a high-throughput API gateway) under timed conditions. Focus on key components, scalability, fault tolerance, and monitoring.

• Coding Proficiency: Sharpen your skills in Go, Java, or Python, focusing on common algorithms, data structures, concurrency patterns, and efficient coding practices. Practice solving problems that mimic real-world backend development challenges.

• Operational Scenarios: Prepare to discuss your approach to common operational issues: diagnosing performance bottlenecks, handling outages, setting up monitoring and alerting, and conducting effective postmortems.

• Company Research: Understand Harness's product, mission, and the specific challenges they are solving in the AI Software Delivery space. This will help you tailor your answers and demonstrate genuine interest.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section provides a structured breakdown of the likely interview process for a Staff-level engineering role, with specific advice on portfolio preparation and challenge readiness, tailored to the backend platform and operational excellence focus of this position.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Languages: Go, Java, Python (primary focus)

• Containerization & Orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS), Docker

• Cloud Platforms: AWS, GCP, Azure

• Messaging & Streaming: Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ

• Service Mesh: Istio, Linkerd (preferred)

Analytics & Reporting:

• Monitoring & Alerting: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog

• Distributed Tracing: OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin

• Logging: ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Splunk

CRM & Automation:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, Pulumi

• CI/CD Tools: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Argo CD

• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL (SQL); Cassandra, DynamoDB, Redis, MongoDB (NoSQL)

• API Technologies: gRPC, REST APIs, GraphQL

📝 Enhancement Note: The "Key Responsibilities" and "About You" sections provided a wealth of information about the required technologies. This section categorizes these tools and technologies for clarity, highlighting the core stack expected for a backend platform engineer at Harness.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Reliability First: A deep commitment to building and maintaining systems that are robust, available, and performant, even under extreme load.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilizing metrics, logs, and traces to understand system behavior, identify areas for improvement, and validate the impact of changes.

• Continuous Improvement: A proactive approach to identifying and addressing technical debt, optimizing processes, and staying ahead of emerging technologies and threats.

• Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: A culture where engineers actively share knowledge, provide constructive feedback through code reviews, and work together to solve complex problems.

• Ownership and Accountability: Taking full responsibility for the systems you build and operate, from design through to production support and incident resolution.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-Functional Integration: Close collaboration with product engineering, security, and SRE teams to ensure platform capabilities align with business needs and operational requirements.

• Process Review Culture: Openness to discussing and refining workflows, architectural patterns, and operational procedures through regular team syncs and retrospectives.

• Knowledge Exchange: Active participation in internal tech talks, documentation contributions, and mentoring sessions to disseminate best practices and foster collective growth.

📝 Enhancement Note: While not explicitly detailed in the input, typical values for a high-growth tech company focused on platform engineering and operational excellence have been inferred. These values emphasize reliability, data, continuous improvement, and collaboration, which are critical for success in such roles.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Scaling to Millions of Users: Ensuring the platform can handle exponential growth in users, requests, and data volume while maintaining low latency and high availability.

• Complexity of Distributed Systems: Navigating and troubleshooting intricate interdependencies between numerous microservices in a production environment.

• Balancing Innovation and Stability: Introducing new features and technologies while upholding stringent reliability and security standards for a critical enterprise platform.

• Evolving AI Landscape: Adapting the platform to integrate and leverage new AI capabilities effectively, ensuring it remains at the forefront of software delivery innovation.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Advanced Cloud-Native Technologies: Deep dive into cutting-edge Kubernetes features, service mesh technologies, and serverless computing paradigms.

• AI Integration in Platforms: Gain hands-on experience with applying AI/ML to enhance platform operations, such as predictive failure analysis or intelligent resource optimization.

• Leadership & Mentorship: Develop strong leadership skills by mentoring junior engineers, leading architectural reviews, and contributing to technical strategy.

• Industry Conferences & Certifications: Opportunities to attend leading DevOps, cloud, and platform engineering conferences, and pursue relevant certifications.

📝 Enhancement Note: Challenges are derived from the nature of the role (Staff Engineer, high-scale platform) and the company's focus (AI Software Delivery). Growth opportunities are aligned with career progression in backend platform engineering and the specific domain of AI-driven software delivery.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• System Design: "Design a scalable, fault-tolerant system for real-time log aggregation and analysis for millions of services." Focus on components, data flow, scalability bottlenecks, and monitoring.

• Operational Excellence: "Describe your approach to defining and measuring SLOs for a critical microservice. How would you handle an incident where an SLO is breached?" Be ready to discuss specific tools and processes.

• Problem Solving: "A latency spike is observed across multiple services. How would you systematically diagnose and resolve this issue in a production environment?" Emphasize your debugging methodology.

Company & Culture Questions:

• "How do you see AI impacting the future of software delivery, and how can Harness's platform lead this transformation?" Relate this to your technical experience.

• "Describe a time you had to influence technical direction or advocate for a specific technology within your team. What was the outcome?" Demonstrate your leadership and communication skills.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• STAR Method for Case Studies: Structure your project explanations using the Situation, Task, Action, Result framework. Clearly articulate the problem, your role, the actions you took, and the quantifiable results achieved.

• Visual Aids: Use architecture diagrams, flowcharts, and performance graphs to visually represent your work and make it easier for interviewers to understand complex systems.

• Focus on Impact: Emphasize not just what you built, but why it mattered and the business value it delivered (e.g., improved uptime, reduced operational costs, faster deployments).

• Be Prepared for Deep Dives: Anticipate detailed technical questions about your portfolio projects. Know your code, your design choices, and the trade-offs you made.

📝 Enhancement Note: This section provides concrete examples of interview questions and preparation strategies tailored for a Staff Backend Platform Engineer role, emphasizing system design, operational challenges, and effective portfolio presentation.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Senior Software Engineer - Platform (UI) position:

• Submit your application through the official Harness careers portal via the provided URL.

• Customize Your Resume: Tailor your resume to highlight your 10-14 years of experience in backend platform engineering, distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native technologies. Emphasize achievements related to scalability, reliability, performance optimization, and incident management using keywords from the job description.

• Prepare Your Portfolio: Assemble a portfolio that showcases your most impactful projects, focusing on system design case studies, microservices implementations, and contributions to operational excellence. Be ready to present and discuss these in detail.

• Practice Technical Interviews: Sharpen your skills in system design, coding (Go, Java, or Python), and operational troubleshooting. Practice explaining complex technical concepts and your decision-making process clearly and concisely.

• Research Harness: Thoroughly research Harness's AI Software Delivery Platform, its mission, recent news, and its impact on the industry. Understand their technology stack and company culture to articulate your alignment.

• Prepare Questions: Develop thoughtful questions for the interviewers about the team, technologies, challenges, and growth opportunities within the Platform engineering function at Harness.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.

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