Technical Lead (Backend)

Aereo (earlier known as Aarav Unmanned Systems) is a deep-tech company building the future of how the physical world is mapped, understood and managed. We build end-to-end drone and geospatial intelligence solutions for enterprises and governments across mining & metals, infrastructure, energy, utilities, urban planning and other large-scale industries. Our technology brings together aerial robotics, computer vision, GIS, AI and cloud software to solve complex, real-world problems at scale. We are backed by leading Indian VCs and have built a self-sustaining, rapidly growing business with a strong presence in the commercial drone ecosystem. At Aereo, we believe in solving meaningful problems, moving with urgency, and building technology that creates measurable impact. About Aereo Cloud Aereo Cloud is our enterprise SaaS platform and the technology backbone of our geospatial intelligence ecosystem. The platform enables organizations to securely store, manage, visualize and analyze massive volumes of drone and geospatial data, and turn that data into actionable business insights and workflows. With workloads operating at PB-scale, Aereo Cloud brings together large-scale data processing, geospatial visualization, analytics and enterprise workflows. The platform is being built to support increasingly large datasets, customers and use cases across industries. We are looking for a Technical Lead to help shape the next phase of Aereo Cloud. The Role As a Technical Lead – Cloud Solutions, you will play a dual role across technical leadership and people leadership - driving the technical direction and execution of a key area of Aereo Cloud while building, developing and scaling a high-performing engineering team. This is a 50:50 technical and people leadership role. You will remain hands-on with architecture, system design, technical problem-solving and critical implementation, while also taking significant ownership of the growth, performance and development of engineers in your team. You will work closely with engineers on their career development, provide regular coaching and feedback, set clear expectations, and create a culture of accountability, ownership and continuous improvement. You will also identify and develop future technical leaders and play an active role in hiring and building the capabilities the team needs as Aereo Cloud scales. On the technical side, you will own the technical direction of your area, guide engineers through complex problems, make sound architectural decisions and ensure that product priorities translate into high-quality technical execution. You will stay close to the technology through design, code reviews, debugging and implementation where required. You will work closely with Product, Design, Engineering and Business teams to ensure the team is solving the right problems, making pragmatic technical trade-offs and delivering meaningful customer and business outcomes. We are looking for someone who has grown from a strong hands-on engineering background into technical and people leadership - someone who still enjoys solving complex technical problems while taking increasing ownership of team performance, engineering execution and the development of other engineers. What You'll Do People Leadership & Team Development Build, mentor and develop a high-performing engineering team with a strong culture of ownership, accountability and technical excellence. Take ownership of the career development and growth of engineers, helping them build the skills, experience and judgment required to progress to their next level. Conduct regular 1:1s and provide thoughtful, actionable feedback that helps engineers improve both technically and professionally. Identify high-potential engineers and actively develop them into future technical leaders. Set clear expectations, goals and measurable outcomes for team members, and create a culture of accountability and continuous improvement. Understand the strengths, development areas and aspirations of individual team members and create opportunities for them to grow. Coach engineers through technical and professional challenges and help them become increasingly independent in their decision-making and ownership. Foster an environment where engineers are encouraged to take ownership, challenge ideas, make decisions and learn from failures. Build strong collaboration and trust within the team while maintaining a high bar for engineering quality and execution. Recognise and celebrate individual and team contributions while keeping the team focused on shared outcomes and business impact. Participate actively in hiring, interviewing and onboarding exceptional engineering talent as the team scales. Partner with engineering leadership to identify future capability gaps and build the team required to support Aereo Cloud's growth. Technical Leadership & Execution Own the technical direction of your area of Aereo Cloud, aligned with product and business priorities. Work closely with Product and Engineering to translate product requirements and customer problems into clear technical priorities and executable plans. Lead architecture and system design discussions and make pragmatic trade-offs across scalability, performance, reliability, security, cost and engineering velocity. Guide engineers through complex technical problems and ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable and fit for purpose. Stay hands-on with architecture, system design, technical problem-solving, code reviews, debugging and critical implementation. Identify technical and architectural gaps that could limit the platform's ability to scale and drive initiatives to address them. Establish and continuously improve engineering standards, development practices and technical guidelines across the team. Drive strong practices around testing, CI/CD, observability, performance optimisation and production reliability. Own delivery of business-critical technical initiatives from planning through production, ensuring the team consistently delivers against committed outcomes. Product & Customer Impact Understand the broader vision and business context of Aereo Cloud and help the engineering team connect their work to customer and business outcomes. Work closely with Product, Design, Business and customer-facing teams to understand complex problems and translate them into effective technical solutions. Influence the product roadmap by identifying technical opportunities, platform capabilities and improvements that can create meaningful customer and business impact. Balance short-term product requirements with long-term platform scalability, maintainability and technical health. Ensure the team focuses not just on building technically sound systems, but on solving the right problems for customers. Engineering Excellence & Operational Ownership Define and track engineering metrics around reliability, performance, quality, delivery and operational health. Own production health for your area, including incidents, on-call processes, performance issues, bugs and root-cause analysis. Drive the platform towards high availability and reliability, with a target of 99.99% availability. Establish strong practices around monitoring, observability, capacity planning and proactive identification of production risks. Lead the team through complex production issues and ensure learnings are translated into lasting improvements. Identify engineering bottlenecks and continuously improve development and delivery processes. Make pragmatic decisions that balance speed, quality and long-term technical sustainability. What We're Looking For Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating production-grade systems. 1+ years of experience leading and developing software engineers, through formal people management and/or technical leadership responsibilities. Strong experience designing and building distributed systems and microservices architectures. Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, APIs, databases and cloud-native application development. Strong proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, Java, Go or similar. Experience working with production systems with a strong focus on scalability, performance, reliability and security. Demonstrated ability to take technical initiatives from ambiguity through execution and production. Preferred Qualifications Experience working in a product or SaaS company, preferably building customer-facing products. Experience managing and developing a team of engineers, including career development, performance management and hiring. Experience mentoring engineers and developing them into greater technical ownership or leadership. Experience owning or significantly influencing a product or engineering roadmap. Experience working with large-scale data-intensive or distributed systems. Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP or Azure and modern cloud-native technologies. Familiarity with containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability and infrastructure-as-code. Experience working with geospatial, GIS, mapping, imagery, computer vision or other spatial/data-heavy applications. Experience working in an environment where engineering teams have significant ownership of product and technical decisions. Why Aereo You will have the opportunity to work on a genuinely complex engineering problem at the intersection of cloud software, geospatial intelligence, aerial robotics and large-scale data. If you enjoy building and developing great engineering teams, staying close to the technology, solving hard technical problems and turning ambitious product roadmaps into reality, this is an opportunity to play a meaningful role in building the next generation of Aereo Cloud.