Principal Engineer

SARAL - Principal Engineer - Job Description

(Remote | Reports to CTO | $50k-$70k | Promotes to Head of Eng)

Quick Highlights

Role: Be part of the core engineering team at a company with the mission to build the world’s best influencer operating system to power partnerships between e-commerce brands and creators. Reports to: Head of Engineering Stage: Lean team of 15 total, 4 engineers. Completely Remote role. Growth: Bootstrapped and profitable to over 200 US-based brands. Crossed $1.5M ARR. Compensation: Rs. 40 LPA to Rs. 60 LPA (flexible for the right candidate) Opportunity for Impact: Build robust, high-performance systems and shape the architecture of products, set engineering standards and create a best-in-class product that drives real business impact at a fast-growing startup. Work: You'll own core parts end-to-end. Unlike larger orgs with rigid handoffs between DevOps, DBAs, and Architects, our engineers make their own decisions, work across the stack, and ship faster — eliminating unnecessary delays and maximising impact. Transitions to: Backend Lead role in 8 months to 1 year We will prioritise / expedite your application if You’ve Open Source contributions or presented at well-known technical conferences You’ve previously been a technical founder or co-founder of a company. Be sure to highlight this in your email or resume.

About SARAL

SARAL - Influencer Relationship ManagementSARAL is your easy-to-use & affordable influencer marketing platform and assistant built for ecommerce brands. Find creators, automate outreach, manage relationships, and much more! Claim your free access today to build a successful influencer program for your brand! SARAL is an influencer relationship management platform for Ecommerce businesses to find, reach out, manage, and track performance of the influencers they work with. We’re a self-funded company from India, selling primarily to US-based brands. Find out more on our website and read the origin story.

Our mission is to be the simplest results-oriented influencer marketing platform DTC brands use for all-things that involve creators. SARAL exists so brands can seamlessly build & maintain relationships with creators.

You’d be a fit if…

You’ve held a Backend Engineer position before and have at least 6 years of experience. You have exceptional technical skills, a hunger to learn more, want to build interesting features that customers pay for, and work in a lean team. You enjoy coding, have a bias for action, and are solution-oriented. You want to build towards this India 3.0 vision. You understand and empathise with our customers. You proactively watch user sessions, understand the product and design side of things, and truly get what we solve for with every feature.

You should not apply if

You don’t have at least 2 years of experience working at a single company. Without this, you don’t see the consequences of your decisions. You’re not passionate about coding. If writing code is just a paycheck and you’re okay with mediocre solutions, shortcuts, and piling up tech debt, Saral is not the place for you. We care deeply about craftsmanship, specially with AI handling the grunt work - we take pride in building things the right way. You’re not product & customer-obsessed. If you only care about the core technology without having the curiosity to understand the market and customers, you likely won’t make it at SARAL. You’re looking for a short-term gig. We’re an early-stage company building from the ground up, and we need people who are committed for the long haul.

Requirements ​

You’ve previously held a Backend Engineer or a Lead Backend Engineer position and have 6+ years of experience working with backend technologies, specifically Node.js. You have leadership experience in leading teams for 2+ years. Strong grasp of system design principles, you can architect scalable, reliable, and maintainable backend systems. Expert-level proficiency in TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Express.js. This is non-negotiable. Hands-on experience with AWS (EC2, ECS, S3, Lambda, SQS) is a good to have. Good understanding of caching strategies and implementation (Redis, Memcached, etc.) Strong command of SQL and database performance optimization, you’ve written complex queries and know how to analyze and tune for efficiency. Proven experience in designing, developing, and maintaining RESTful APIs. You collaborate effectively with engineers, product managers, designers, and leadership to clarify requirements, maintain project visibility, and deliver impact.

Responsibilities ​

Engineering excellence, you hold yourself to a high standard, treat engineering as a craft, and take pride in your work Perform PR reviews for other developers, guide junior engineers when they’re stuck, and continuously raise the bar for clean, high-quality code. Write robust APIs, design and implement scalable and maintainable backend services. Ensure modular, maintainable code to accommodate rapid feature iterations, optimize backend performance, latency, and throughput. Good to work with: You spend more waking hours with your teammates than anyone else. Others enjoy working with you because of your positive attitude and technical competence You collaborate effectively with engineers, product managers, designers, and leadership to clarify requirements, maintain project visibility, and deliver impact. Customer Obsession: You put customers first and recognize that we only succeed when they succeed. You care about how customers feel when they use our product and not just about the technology.

Our Core Values

Before joining a company, you must know what we value and how we operate. We look for and nurture these values in every member on our team. Customer Obsession: We're focused on our customer's unmet needs, their anxieties, and frustrations when it comes to influencer marketing. We build products that help alleviate these. We go above and beyond for our customers during onboarding and support. When they win, we win. Self-Agency: We take ownership of problems. Did the customer make a mistake? It's on us to fix. Someone on the team messes things up? It's upon us to pick things back up. Competitor launches smear campaign? We continue focusing on our game. Bias for action: We do things quickly—not at the end of the week, but today. We hotfix minor bugs for customers, even if they don't need them immediately. We take action on suggested improvements as soon as possible. We do not wait for approvals or meetings for easily reversible decisions. We take action. Systems Thinking: Fix the system, not the problem. We break problems down to first principles and figure out ways to make an order of magnitude better solution to them. We ask: How can we make something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x more impactful to our customers? Then we do that. If you resonate with these, then we must talk!

SARAL from others’ lenses: ​

Don’t take our word for how awesome we are. You should check: Interviews with the founder, Yash Chavan:

Our Influencer Marketing SaaS Works With 13,000+ Influencers ($50K/Month) - Starter StoryHello! Who are you and what business did you start?I'm Yash Chavan. I'm the founder of SARAL. I am a marketer at heart who dropped out of engineering college to work in sales and eventually fell in love with growing SAAS companies. SARAL is an influencer relationship management platform... If You Want Nice Things, Start Your Own BusinessAs a child, Yash Chavan earned pennies selling school supplies to his classmates. Now he makes millions selling a top influencer marketing platform called SARAL. Influencer marketing platform SARAL reports FY23-24 revenue at $1. Customer love for SARAL: SARAL - Customer Love G2 Reviews from users (4.8 avg rating):