Associate Director Engineering

About us: At Cashfree Payments, we’re not just shaping the future of payments—we’re moving fast to scale businesses at every stage, with deep expertise in powering India’s D2C and e-commerce growth. Founded in 2015, we process transactions worth $80B annually and are trusted by more than 800,000 businesses. Authorised by the Reserve Bank of India, we are one of the first entities to receive critical licences like PA-PG, PA-CB and PPI in the sector. We enable seamless collections, payouts, identity verification, and fraud detection. We are backed by Silicon Valley investor Y Combinator, Apis Partners, Krafton Inc, State Bank of India (SBI), and were incubated by PayPal. Associate Director – Engineering (12+ Years Experience) Role Overview As an Associate Director of Engineering, you will drive technology vision, execution excellence, and organizational capability for a business unit. You will operate at the intersection of strategy and delivery—shaping architecture, scaling teams, and ensuring high-quality product outcomes aligned with business goals. Key Responsibilities ● Technology Strategy & Architecture ○ Define and own the technology roadmap for multiple products or platforms within the business unit, ensuring alignment with the organization’s long-term technology vision. ○ Govern architectural decisions across systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency. ○ Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies to drive innovation and competitive advantage. ● Execution & Delivery Excellence ○ Oversee end-to-end product delivery, ensuring high-quality releases within defined timelines. ○ Establish and optimize engineering processes, development standards, and best practices to improve productivity and predictability. ○ Drive data-informed decision-making using engineering metrics (velocity, quality, reliability, cost). ● Leadership & Talent Development ○ Build, lead, and scale high-performing engineering teams, including Engineering Managers and senior technical leaders. ○ Identify skill gaps and implement structured learning, upskilling, and leadership development programs. ○ Mentor Engineering Managers and senior engineers to enhance technical depth and leadership capability. ● Cross-functional Collaboration ○ Partner with Product, QA, UX, Operations, and Business stakeholders to ensure effective planning, staffing, and execution of initiatives. ○ Communicate technical strategy and trade-offs clearly to executive and non-technical stakeholders. ○ Align engineering priorities with business outcomes, customer needs, and operational goals. Core Requirements ● Strong expertise in designing and scaling distributed systems, microservices architectures, and event-driven systems. ● Deep experience with Java ecosystem (e.g., Spring Boot, Hibernate, JPA) and modern backend development practices. ● Solid understanding of data architectures, including relational databases and NoSQL/document stores. ● Proven ability in object-oriented design, system design, and architectural patterns. ● Good understanding of web and mobile technology stacks. ● Strong grasp of non-functional requirements and the ability to make pragmatic trade-offs. ● Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and automated testing frameworks. ● Hands-on familiarity with agile methodologies and modern software development practices. ● Experience managing and operating large-scale production systems. Experience & Qualifications ● 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with a significant portion in leadership roles managing teams and large-scale systems. ● Proven track record of delivering complex software products from inception to launch and scaling them in production. ● Experience leading multiple teams or large engineering groups in a fast-paced environment. ● Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.