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.