Website:
trafasa.com
Job details:
WE'RE HIRING | LEAD ENGINEER – AI & PRODUCT ENGINEERING
Location: Kolkata
Company: Trafasa
Experience: Ideally 5–10 years
Role Type: Full-time | Hands-on | Early-stage / 0→1 Product Building
ABOUT TRAFASA
Trafasa is an early-stage technology company building an AI-enabled enterprise procurement and commerce platform.
We are looking for an exceptional hands-on technology professional who wants to do more than maintain an existing product.
You will help BUILD the product.
This is an opportunity for someone who enjoys turning business problems into working software, wants significant technology ownership, and is excited by the possibility of growing with the company as our product, customers and engineering organisation scale.
THE ROLE
We are looking for a Lead Engineer – AI & Product Engineering who can work closely with the founders and take hands-on ownership of product engineering and technology execution.
This is NOT a pure people-management, project-management or enterprise-architecture position.
You should still enjoy writing code, building prototypes, designing systems, integrating APIs, deploying applications and solving difficult production problems yourself.
Initially, the engineering team will be small. We therefore need someone comfortable moving between architecture and implementation rather than depending on large specialised teams.
As Trafasa grows, the role can evolve into broader engineering and technology leadership.
WHAT YOU WILL OWN
• Work closely with the founders to translate business requirements into product and technology solutions.
• Architect and personally contribute to the development of Trafasa's core platform.
• Build scalable backend services, APIs, workflows, integrations and data models.
• Design and implement AI-enabled product capabilities using LLMs where they create genuine business value.
• Build capabilities involving RAG, enterprise search, document intelligence, workflow automation and AI agents where appropriate.
• Integrate external enterprise systems, APIs and third-party services.
• Make pragmatic architecture decisions appropriate for an early-stage product — balancing speed, scalability, security and maintainability.
• Own or actively participate in cloud deployment, CI/CD, monitoring, debugging and production troubleshooting.
• Establish sensible engineering standards for code quality, security, testing, documentation and releases.
• Conduct code/design reviews and mentor engineers as the team expands.
• Help recruit and develop the future engineering team.
• Gradually take broader ownership of engineering execution as Trafasa scales.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
CORE ENGINEERING
• Strong hands-on backend/software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in at least one major backend stack such as Python, Java/Spring Boot, Node.js/TypeScript or equivalent.
• Solid understanding of REST APIs, databases, authentication, distributed applications and system integration.
• Experience designing and delivering production applications, not just prototypes or proofs of concept.
• Strong SQL/database fundamentals; experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases preferred.
AI / GENAI
We do NOT expect someone who merely knows how to call an LLM API.
We are looking for practical understanding of areas such as:
• LLM application development
• RAG and vector/semantic retrieval
• Embeddings and document processing
• Prompt/context engineering
• Structured LLM outputs and tool/function calling
• Agentic workflows
• Evaluation, hallucination/grounding and guardrails
• Human-in-the-loop workflows
• AI observability and cost/latency considerations
Hands-on exposure to frameworks/platforms such as LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, Azure OpenAI, Bedrock, Vertex AI or equivalent is useful — but demonstrated engineering ability matters more than a list of tools.
CLOUD & DEVOPS
Practical experience with:
• AWS / Azure / GCP
• Docker
• CI/CD
• Git
• Cloud deployment
• Logging and monitoring
Kubernetes experience is useful but not mandatory.
THE PERSON WE WANT
Technology skills alone are not enough.
You should be someone who:
• Is still genuinely hands-on and enjoys building.
• Can take an ambiguous business problem and convert it into a working product.
• Is comfortable operating without a large engineering organisation around you.
• Thinks like a product builder, not merely a task executor.
• Can make sensible trade-offs instead of over-engineering everything.
• Takes ownership when something breaks.
• Can communicate technology decisions clearly to non-technical founders and business stakeholders.
• Is curious about AI but understands that not every problem requires AI.
• Wants to build systems that customers actually use.
• Has the potential and ambition to grow into broader engineering leadership as the company scales.
WHAT WE DO NOT NEED
This role may NOT be suitable if:
• You are currently looking only for a people-management role.
• You have moved completely away from hands-on engineering.
• Your experience is primarily project/program management.
• Your AI experience is predominantly theoretical, managerial or presentation/strategy based.
• You require a large engineering team before you can execute.
• You prefer highly structured environments with narrowly defined responsibilities.
WHY THIS ROLE MAY BE INTERESTING
This isn't a role where you inherit a mature product and maintain somebody else's technology decisions.
You will have an opportunity to influence what gets built, how it gets built and how the technology organisation evolves.
For the right person, this can grow beyond a Lead Engineer position into significant engineering and technology leadership as Trafasa grows.
You will work directly with the founders, have visibility into business and product decisions, and see the impact of what you build.
Candidates currently outside Kolkata may also apply if they are genuinely open to relocating.
COMPENSATION
₹18–20 LPA, depending on experience, capability and overall fit.
We prefer to be transparent about the range upfront so that both sides can determine fit before investing significant time in the interview process.
HOW WE WILL ASSESS
Our selection process will focus less on certifications and job titles and more on what you have actually built.
TO APPLY
Please send your CV along with short answers to the following to hr@trafasa.com:
1. What is the most technically challenging production product/system you personally helped build? What did YOU personally implement?
2. Describe one AI/LLM/RAG/agentic solution you have personally worked on. What was your hands-on contribution?
3. Are you currently hands-on with coding? What languages/frameworks have you personally coded with during the last 12 months?
4. Have you ever built a product or major system from 0→1 with a small team? Please briefly describe it.
5. Are you comfortable joining an early-stage company where you may initially need to architect, code, troubleshoot and deploy yourself?
6. Are you based in Kolkata? If not, are you willing to relocate?
7. What is your current CTC, expected CTC and notice period / earliest joining date?
Please apply only if the hands-on nature, location and compensation range are broadly aligned with what you are looking for.
We would rather have a small number of highly relevant conversations than a large number of generic applications.
Click on Apply to know more.