Principal Engineer

Key Responsibilities

Product Engineering \& Product Thinking

• Lead the technical design and engineering of software products from early ideation and prototyping through development, launch, scaling, and continuous evolution.
• Bring a strong product mindset, focusing on customer problems, user experience, business value, differentiation, and long-term product sustainability.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, designers, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to translate product vision into scalable and technically sound solutions.
• Make pragmatic engineering decisions by balancing product requirements, speed to market, quality, cost, and future scalability.
• Identify opportunities for reusable components, shared platforms, and engineering capabilities that accelerate product development.
• Take ownership of product engineering outcomes rather than focusing solely on completing assigned technical deliverables.

Innovation \& Intellectual Property (IP) Mindset

• Contribute to Tntra's IP-led engineering approach by identifying opportunities for technical innovation and product differentiation.
• Understand the importance of intellectual property in creating competitive advantage, protecting innovation, and building long-term business value.
• Collaborate with product, innovation, and IP specialists to explore unique technical approaches and potentially protectable innovations.
• Encourage experimentation, rapid prototyping, proof-of-concept development, and structured technical validation of new ideas.
• Help document innovative technical approaches, architectural decisions, and engineering concepts that may support future IP development.
• Promote an engineering mindset that goes beyond implementing existing solutions to creating differentiated products and capabilities.

Technical Leadership \& Software Architecture

• Serve as a technical authority for complex engineering challenges, system architecture, and critical technology decisions.
• Design scalable, secure, reliable, maintainable, and high-performing software systems and platforms.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance and remain actively involved in architectural problem-solving, engineering reviews, and critical implementations.
• Establish and promote architectural principles, engineering standards, design patterns, and software development best practices.
• Lead and participate in Tntra's Design Forum, contributing to end-to-end design authority and architecture governance.
• Evaluate technology choices, architectural trade-offs, technical risks, and long-term implications of engineering decisions.
• Promote modern engineering practices, automation, AI-assisted development, and responsible adoption of emerging technologies.

Strategic Engineering \& Business Alignment

• Work closely with the Global CTO and engineering leadership to align technology decisions with product strategy, business objectives, and innovation opportunities.
• Translate complex business challenges into practical technology solutions, architecture strategies, and engineering roadmaps.
• Contribute to technical discovery, solution architecture, estimations, feasibility assessments, and pre-sales engagements.
• Communicate architectural recommendations and technical concepts effectively to customers, senior leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Support technical mobilisation and engineering team composition in collaboration with Engineering Managers and Delivery Managers.
• Provide engineering and architectural leadership across Tntra's operating modes, including Startup, Product, Incubation, Delivery, and Strategy.

Engineering Culture, Collaboration \& Mentorship

• Demonstrate strong technical ownership, accountability, integrity, and commitment to engineering excellence.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, constructive technical discussions, and continuous improvement.
• Encourage engineers to challenge assumptions, explore alternatives, and solve underlying problems rather than simply implementing requested solutions.
• Collaborate openly across engineering, product, design, and business teams, promoting collective ownership and shared success.
• Mentor Senior Engineers, Technical Leads, and emerging technology leaders through technical guidance, design reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Lead through technical credibility, collaboration, and influence rather than formal reporting authority.
• Contribute to an environment where engineers are empowered to learn, innovate, take initiative, and grow professionally.

Required Skills

Technical and Product Engineering Experience

• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership and architectural responsibility.
• Proven experience building, launching, and evolving software products, rather than experience limited to project-based development or feature implementation.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end product engineering lifecycle, including discovery, design, development, deployment, scaling, and continuous improvement.
• Deep expertise in software architecture, system design, distributed systems, API design, integration patterns, and modern application development.
• Experience designing and delivering scalable, secure, reliable, and production-grade software solutions.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, databases, DevOps, CI/CD, security principles, and modern engineering practices.
• Ability to remain technically hands-on while providing architectural and strategic leadership.
• Strong technical problem-solving skills and the ability to make sound engineering decisions in complex or ambiguous situations.

Product, Innovation \& Strategic Capabilities

• Demonstrated product mindset with an understanding of customer needs, product differentiation, business value, and long-term product evolution.
• Good understanding of intellectual property concepts and how differentiated technical so