Python Lead / Lead Python Engineer

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Employment Type: Full-time
Experience: 10+ yeaPrs
Joining Preference: Immediate joiners or candidates with a very short notice period

About the Role

We are looking for a highly experienced, hands-on Python Lead / Lead Python Engineer to drive technical feasibility, application architecture, backend development, AI-enabled solutions, and end-to-end product delivery.

This is a player-coach role combining hands-on Python engineering with technical leadership. You will evaluate new product ideas, build proof of concepts (PoCs), make architecture decisions, lead a team of engineers, and take applications from feasibility to production.

The ideal candidate should also have strong practical knowledge of AI/GenAI technologies, including LLM integrations, RAG architectures, vector databases, and AI Agent development, and be capable of evaluating and implementing AI-driven product capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct technical feasibility studies, PoCs, and build-versus-buy evaluations.
  

• Prepare feasibility reports with effort estimates, costs, risks, and go/no-go recommendations.
  

• Design scalable, secure, and maintainable Python applications, REST APIs, and AI-enabled backend systems.
  

• Develop backend services using Python and frameworks such as FastAPI, Django, or Flask.
  

• Design and implement GenAI/LLM-powered applications, RAG pipelines, and AI Agents.
  

• Evaluate and integrate LLMs and AI services such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or equivalent platforms.
  

• Design AI application architecture including prompt orchestration, embeddings, vector search, retrieval pipelines, tool/function calling, and agent workflows.
  

• Own application architecture, code quality, performance optimization, and production releases.
  

• Work with PostgreSQL / MySQL, Redis / MongoDB, task queues, message brokers, and vector databases.
  

• Manage cloud deployments, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and production operations.
  

• Lead, mentor, and guide a team of 3–6 engineers.
  

• Drive code reviews, sprint planning, technical documentation, and engineering best practices.
  

• Collaborate with the Founder / CTO and stakeholders to ensure timely product delivery.
  

• Stay current with emerging AI technologies and identify opportunities to leverage AI/automation to improve product capabilities and engineering efficiency.
  

Requirements

Mandatory Skills

• 10+ years of overall software engineering experience.
  

• 6+ years of hands-on production experience with Python 3.x.
  

• Strong experience with FastAPI, Django, or Flask and REST API development.
  

• Experience designing and delivering at least two production systems end to end.
  

• Proven experience in technical feasibility studies and PoCs.
  

• Strong practical knowledge of AI/GenAI and LLM-based application development.
  

• Hands-on experience with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures and implementation.
  

• Hands-on experience building AI Agents / Agentic AI workflows, including tool/function calling, orchestration, and multi-step task execution.
  

• Experience integrating LLM APIs such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or equivalent providers.
  

• Strong understanding of embeddings, vector search, semantic search, chunking, retrieval strategies, and vector databases.
  

• Ability to design and implement production-ready AI applications with appropriate considerations for accuracy, latency, scalability, security, cost, and observability.
  

• Strong database knowledge: PostgreSQL or MySQL, plus Redis or MongoDB.
  

• Experience with Celery / RQ or equivalent task queues and RabbitMQ / Kafka / SQS.
  

• Production experience with AWS / Azure / GCP, Docker, and CI/CD.
  

• Hands-on experience with pytest, code quality tools, and Python type checking.
  

• Knowledge of application security, OAuth2 / JWT, OWASP Top 10, and access control.
  

• At least 2 years of experience leading 3+ engineers.
  

• Strong communication, problem-solving, estimation, and delivery ownership skills.
  

Good-to-Have Skills

• Applied cryptography, key management, and secure licensing mechanisms.
  

• Kubernetes, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
  

• React / Next.js familiarity.
  

• Performance optimization using Rust, Cython, or Go.
  

• Experience taking products from concept to production and first customers.
  

• Experience with advanced agentic AI patterns such as multi-agent systems, MCP, workflow orchestration, AI tool integration, and autonomous task execution.
  

• Experience with AI evaluation, observability, guardrails, prompt/version management, and LLM cost optimization.
  

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for a strong hands-on technical leader who can move seamlessly between Python engineering, system architecture, AI/GenAI implementation, technical feasibility, and team leadership.

The right candidate should be comfortable taking an idea from concept → feasibility → PoC → architecture → development → AI integration → production deployment, while making sound technical and business-oriented decisions along the way.