Founding Engineer

Overview

Company name: Peak XV Partners | HQ Location: Bangalore, Karnataka | Website | LinkedIn

Role: Founding Engineer

• Experience: 7-12 years
• Location: India
• Type: Full-time

Job Summary:
As a Founding Engineer, you’ll work directly with the founders to design, build, and launch the first version of our product. You’ll take full ownership of key technical decisions, architecture, and hands-on development, while helping to build the engineering foundation for a world-class technology company. This role is ideal for a seasoned engineer who thrives in fast-paced environments, is excited about zero-to-one challenges, and wants to make a meaningful impact.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Collaborate with the founding team to define the product vision and translate it into scalable technical architecture.
2. Own and lead end-to-end development of the MVP and early versions of the product.
3. Make critical decisions on technology stack, architecture, DevOps, and infrastructure.
4. Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code while ensuring high performance and responsiveness.
5. Set up CI/CD pipelines, deployment environments, and cloud infrastructure.
6. Define coding standards, engineering workflows, and best practices.
7. Hire and mentor early engineering hires as the team scales.
8. Work cross-functionally with product, design, and business teams to ship features rapidly and iteratively.
9. Drive product and engineering excellence with a focus on user experience, security, and scalability.

Required Qualifications:

1. 7+ years of hands-on software development experience with a track record of building and launching production-grade applications.
2. Proficiency in one or more modern programming languages (e.g., JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Go, Java).
3. Experience with modern web frameworks, APIs, databases, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
4. Strong understanding of system design, data modeling, and performance optimization.
5. Demonstrated ability to lead projects independently and collaborate in high-stakes environments.
6. Startup or entrepreneurial experience, ideally in a zero-to-one or early-stage setting.
7. Strong problem-solving, communication, and decision-making skills.

Nice-to-Have:

1. Experience building SaaS platforms, developer tools, or enterprise products.
2. Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
3. Exposure to product design, UX, or frontend frameworks (React, Vue, etc.).

About Us:
Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) is a leading venture capital and growth investing firm investing across India, Southeast Asia and beyond. Our new name, Peak XV (pronounced Peak Fifteen) was the name used for Mount Everest before it was called that. To us, it signifies the relentless pursuit of greatness by our founders, in spite of challenges along the way. It embodies everything we believe about building long-lasting businesses that stand tall and inspire greatness. 

Over the last 17 years of our operations in the region, Peak XV has grown to manage over USD 9 billion in capital across 13 funds and invested in over 400 companies, of which ~40 companies have achieved revenues of over $100MM. Our team of professionals work across 5 offices – Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore and Dubai and span 14 nationalities. To know more, check out peakxv.com.