Full-Stack Engineer - Backend & Technical Delivery

Instinctive Studio is a Bangalore-based startup building digital products across education, enterprise tools and AI. We're looking for a hands-on Full-Stack Engineer with strong backend and systems architecture experience. You'll contribute directly to the codebase while coordinating the day-to-day work of three to four junior developers. This is not an HR or traditional people-management role. You won't handle salaries, appraisals or performance reviews. Your responsibility is technical delivery: breaking down work, maintaining the task pipeline, reviewing code, unblocking developers and keeping projects moving. You'll work closely with a semi-technical founder, so you should be able to explain architecture, risks and trade-offs clearly and concisely. Compensation: ₹60,000–₹90,000 per month. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING Engineering and Architecture • Build and ship production features using TypeScript, Node.js, Express, React and Next.js • Design APIs, database schemas, authentication systems and background processes • Translate product requirements into practical technical architecture • Diagnose production issues, improve performance and refactor existing modules • Make sensible architectural decisions without overengineering straightforward problems • Handle deployments, patches, rollbacks and environment configuration • Technical Delivery Coordination Coordinate the work of three to four junior developers • Break larger features into clear tasks with dependencies and acceptance criteria • Maintain and prioritise engineering work in Linear and Notion • Identify blockers and unclear requirements before they delay delivery • Review progress and keep the founder informed about risks, decisions and changes in scope • Ensure work moves properly through development, review, testing and deployment Code Quality and Engineering Processes • Review pull requests for correctness, security and maintainability • Use CodeRabbit as part of the review process while applying your own engineering judgement • Define, document and improve development SOPs as the company grows • Establish practical standards for branches, pull requests, testing, releases and documentation • Maintain coding conventions, architecture notes and release checklists • Help junior developers improve their engineering habits and use AI tools responsibly DevOps and Agentic Engineering • Work with Vercel, AWS or Azure, Docker and CI/CD pipelines • Monitor logs, errors, uptime and application performance • Use coding agents to explore codebases, implement scoped work, refactor, test and document • Review and verify agent-generated code before it reaches production • Help define effective agentic engineering workflows for the wider development team WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR • 3+ years building and maintaining commercial web applications • Strong experience with Node.js, Express and TypeScript • Good working knowledge of React and Next.js • Solid understanding of systems architecture, API design and database modelling • Experience with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL • Familiarity with authentication, caching, queues and third-party integrations • Working knowledge of cloud deployment, Docker, CI/CD and Git workflows • Experience reviewing code and giving developers actionable feedback • Ability to break complex requirements into well-scoped engineering tasks • Experience coordinating work across a small development team • Practical experience with coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or similar • Clear written and spoken communication • Comfortable working in a startup where some processes already exist and others still need to be created • Strong ownership: you notice gaps, raise risks and help solve them NICE TO HAVE • Production experience with both Next.js and Vue.js • Experience deploying and maintaining Node.js services on AWS or Azure • Familiarity with Vercel deployments, previews and environment management • Experience with Docker, GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines • Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and cloud configuration • Experience with Redis, queues, background workers or real-time systems • Familiarity with application monitoring, structured logging and error tracking • Experience integrating AI services, vector databases or agentic product features • Previous experience defining engineering SOPs or mentoring junior developers