Senior Technical Lead chez Almabase

About Almabase

We are on a mission to make education affordable to everyone by helping universities & schools build better relationships with their alumni, which leads to increased donations.

1. Democratizing quality education: Quality education is a great equalizer. When many students receive scholarships to access education because of alumni generosity they pay-it-forward when they have the capacity to do so. We derive our inspiration from actions like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/bloomberg-college-donation-financial-aid.html)

2. Building a large profitable business: We envision building a capital-efficient, large profitable business to achieve our mission of democratising quality education. This means less dependence on investors & more ownership with the team. We are one of the few profitable Indian SaaS startups building [Value SaaS](https://valuesaas.co/).

3. Employee Wellness <> Customer Success: We give as much importance to each team member’s personal & professional success as much as we care about our customer's success. We believe it’s all about balance. Our recent [WFH policies](https://twitter.com/kalyanvarmak/status/1304065757844701185) reflect this belief.

- Mission: Make education affordable by helping universities & schools build better relationships with alumni, leading to increased donations.

- Impact so far:

- 3 M alumni connected

- 450 k students impacted

- $25 M donations raised

- 54 M engagement opportunities created

- 32 months profitable

- Culture & Benefits:
We live by a principle of Freedom & Responsibility, underpinned by an unwavering commitment to efficiency. We are an AI-first operating company, which means we actively invest in your professional growth and AI fluency. Expect dedicated time and resources for you to learn, experiment with, and adopt the latest AI tools to optimize your role—from coding and testing to strategic planning. Our comprehensive package includes: great salary & equity, holistic growth opportunities, full transparency, unlimited PTO & WFH flexibility, health insurance, and great food & workplace perks.

Opportunity

Almabase is scaling across Events, Giving, Communication, and Digital Engagement Platform (DEP).

To sustain global growth, Reliability, Scalability, and Security must become core product capabilities.

- Reliability: Eliminate even the smallest customer inconvenience, achieve 99.99% uptime, and sub-1 hour MTTR.

- Scalability: Handle rapid growth in data, users, and integrations without degrading performance; design for 10× capacity.

- Security: Uphold SOC 2 Type II and future frameworks (e.g., HIPAA for healthcare fundraising), prevent breaches, and embed secure-by-design development.

The Senior Technical Lead will:

- Lead Tech Leads across product and core systems.

- Own a product track directly as Product Tech Lead.

- Partner with the VP of Engineering to drive the reliability, scalability, and security roadmap across Almabase.

Appetite

We’re investing for the long term:

- 12-month horizon to embed reliability-first practices across engineering.

- Expectation of measurable improvement in uptime, bug leakage, P95 latency, and MTTR within the first year.

Solution — Role & Responsibilities

Lead & Mentor Tech Leads

- Mentor Product Tech Leads and Core Systems Tech Lead.

- Align them on reliability, scalability, and security objectives.

- Define team structure and rituals to keep these pillars front and center.

Direct Product Tech Leadership

- Act as Product Tech Lead for one or more products.

- Own bug leakage, page/API performance (P95), scalability of architecture, and product security posture.

- Guide architecture reviews, capacity planning, code reviews, and high-risk deployments.

Reliability, Scalability & Security Roadmap

- Reliability: Drive SLO/SLI definitions, proactive monitoring, and blameless postmortems.

- Scalability: Plan for growth in traffic, data, and integrations; introduce auto-scaling, caching strategies, and horizontal/vertical partitioning.

- Security: Work with the VP of Engineering and security partners to meet SOC 2 Type II and future standards; embed secure SDLC, threat modeling, and vulnerability management.

Culture & Mindset Shift

- Evolve engineering culture from fix when broken to design so it never breaks, never slows, never leaks.

- Make reliability, scalability, and security measurable and visible to every engineer.

Collaboration & Accountability

Primary Ownership & Accountability:

• Own the company-wide reliability roadmap.

• Be accountable for:

  • Bug leakage

  • Page/API performance (P95)

  • Uptime (99.9–99.99% target)

  • Product errors (Sentry)

• Co-own incident management, including MTTR reduction and postmortems, alongside product and systems teams.

• Maintain awareness of data sync accuracy for CRM integrations.

• Consult on asynchronous infrastructure (queues, Redis, workers).

• Provide guidance on email deliverability (bounce <2%, SPF/DKIM).

• Drive critical focus on payments reliability.

Collaboration with Product Tech Leads:

• Contribute to the company-wide reliability roadmap.

• Actively participate in bug leakage, page/API performance, uptime, and product error metrics.

• Maintain awareness of data sync accuracy.

• Support asynchronous infrastructure initiatives.

• Contribute to payments reliability and email deliverability efforts.

• Co-own incident management from a product perspective.

Collaboration with Core Systems Tech Lead:

• Contribute to the company-wide reliability roadmap.

• Serve as a consultant for bug leakage, page/API performance, uptime, and product errors.

• Be accountable for data sync accuracy.

• Take accountability for asynchronous infrastructure, payments reliability, and email deliverability.

• Co-own incident management from a systems perspective.

Requirements

To excel in this role, you must combine deep technical mastery with a strategic mindset focused on leveraging AI for internal efficiency and high-leverage outcomes.

I. Core Technical Leadership (Experience & Skills)

- Experience: 5+ years of backend engineering experience with 1+ years in a technical leadership role.

- Reliability Focus: Proven track record of driving product reliability, scalability, and performance at SaaS scale, including setting and meeting SLOs/SLIs, establishing strong observability, and leading incident management processes.

- Backend Expertise: Strong foundational expertise in backend development (**Python preferred**) and practical experience with major cloud infrastructure providers (Azure, AWS, or GCP).

- Systems Architecture: Deep knowledge of distributed systems, asynchronous infrastructure (queues, Redis, workers), and managing high-volume, reliable data integrations.

- Leadership & Coaching: Excellent leadership and communication skills; proven ability to coach and mentor other engineers/Tech Leads and effectively influence team culture and technical direction.

Nice to Have

- Familiarity with observability stacks (Datadog, Elasticsearch, Sentry).

- Experience within the CRM ecosystem (e.g., Blackbaud, Salesforce).

First-Year Outcomes

| 0-3 months | Build trust with tech leads & engineers; full product architecture & infra deep-dive; initial reliability assessment; deliver quick-win fixes; take direct ownership as Product Tech Lead. |

| 4-6 months | Implement company-wide SLO/SLI tracking and dashboards; establish cadence of blameless postmortems; align all Tech Leads on a single reliability strategy. |

| 7-12 months | Achieve or exceed 99.99% uptime across products; significantly reduce bug leakage & P95 latency; embed reliability-first mindset across engineering; have a multi-year reliability roadmap co-authored with VP of Engineering. |

Risks & No-Gos

- Not a pure manager role: must stay hands-on as a Product Tech Lead.

- Not a solo IC role: success depends on leading and scaling other Tech Leads.

- No compromise on observability and postmortem culture—these are foundational.