Principal Software Engineer, Backend

Skylo

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Location: Bangalore, India
Job Type: full-time
Work Format: 🏢 Hybrid
Salary: Not specified
Posted: October 7, 2026

Job Description

The world still has coverage blind spots. You could help eliminate them at Skylo.

Skylo has pioneered a standards-based approach to satellite connectivity. We connect smartphones and IoT devices directly to satellites. No special hardware, no entirely new networks. Just billions of existing devices, suddenly reachable anywhere on Earth. We're not building toward this future. We're already in it.

Our direct-to-device service is live on millions of activated devices across five continents, covering more than 72 million square kilometers, in partnership with leading satellite operators, mobile network operators, Tier-1 chipset makers, and OEMs worldwide. And we're just getting started.

At the heart of it all is Skylo's commercial NTN vRAN: a 3GPP standards-based, cloud-native platform that seamlessly bridges terrestrial and satellite networks. It's the infrastructure that makes true anywhere, anytime connectivity possible.

When you join Skylo, you'll work at the intersection of three markets reshaping how the world stays connected: mass-market consumer devices, automotive, and industrial IoT. Enabling people outdoors and critical workflows in the world's most remote places.

This is a rare chance to work on technology that matters, at a company that's already proving it works

This role is located in Bangalore, India where we are onsite 3 days a week in office.

Summary Of How You Will Impact Skylo

As a Principal Software Engineer, Backend for the Platform & Cloud Services team, you will be a technical cornerstone, helping fulfil Skylo's mission of making satellite connectivity available to all. This is a senior, hands-on Individual Contributor role for an architect-level engineer who is driven by technical excellence and has a passion for mentoring others. You will be a technical authority, responsible for driving the architecture, design, and implementation of our most critical product features and services. This is a technical leadership role, requiring both hands-on expertise and management skills

Your influence will extend across multiple functional groups, ensuring that our backend platform is scalable, resilient, and built to the highest standards. You will lead by example, setting the bar for engineering quality and guiding teams through complex technical challenges, elevating the skills of the entire team.

How You Will Contribute

Architect and Design: Lead the design and architecture of complex, large-scale, and distributed backend systems. You will take ownership of critical architecture decisions, design patterns, and infrastructure choices.
Drive Technical Strategy: Define and steer the technical strategy for major components and product features, working closely with engineering leadership, product managers, and other key stakeholders.
Lead Implementation: Own and lead the implementation of large-scale features, from initial design and prototyping through to testing and deployment. You will be hands-on, solving the most challenging technical problems.
Champion Engineering Excellence: Drive a culture of high quality and continuous improvement through rigorous code and design reviews. You will champion best practices like clean code, scalable design, and DevOps maturity.
Mentor and Advise: Act as a technical advisor and mentor to senior, mid-level, and junior engineers, promoting best practices and elevating the technical skills of the team.
Ensure Quality and Security: Drive & Define component test scenarios, drive API test automation, and ensure high code coverage. You will implement and enforce security best practices throughout the software development lifecycle.
Optimize and Scale: Identify performance bottlenecks and lead initiatives to optimize system performance, scalability, and reliability.
Innovate and Evaluate: Evaluate and recommend emerging tools, technologies, and frameworks to keep our platform modern, efficient, and innovative.

What We Look For

Experience: 16+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on backend development and the architecture of distributed systems.
Technical Leadership: A proven track record of technical leadership, including owning the design of major features, mentoring engineers, people management and successfully driving engineering-wide initiatives.
Backend Expertise: Extensive experience with microservices architecture, API design (REST, gRPC), and API documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI). Strong expertise in scalable data stores (SQL and NoSQL), caching systems (Redis, Memcached), and message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Pub/Sub). Deep proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g., Java, Go, Python)
Cloud-Native Fluency: Solid understanding of cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure). Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and building robust CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI).
Quality and Observability: Strong knowledge of engineering best practices, including automated testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit, TestNG). Experience with observability tools for monitoring, logging, and tracing (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, OpenTelemetry).
Telecommunications domain experience is highly advantageous, complemented by a good understanding of 3GPP specifications related to EPC and 5G Core
Collaboration and Communication: Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. Proven ability to work cross-functionally and influence decisions through technical expertise.
AI Augmented Development: Every role at Skylo uses AI tools daily to amplify output. We expect active habits using AI tools and a track record of folding new ones into your workflow quickly
Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

What We Offer

With employees working across three continents, Skylo is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. Our worldwide and inclusive culture encourages a flexible approach to work, and we also offer an attractive range of benefits such as:

Competitive compensation packages, including a stock option-based equity program.
Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and a retirement plan.
Monthly allowances for wellness and education reimbursement.
A generous time-off policy, holidays, and the opportunity to temporarily work abroad.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of developing and running the world's first commercial, live direct-to-device satellite network and service.
Access to a world-class team and talent across tech domains: software, hardware, chipsets, telecom, satellite, and network virtualization.
An open, transparent, and inclusive culture that blends Silicon Valley, Nordic, and South Asia characteristics.

EEO Statement

Skylo is an equal-opportunity employer, and we celebrate diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, parent or caregiver status, political affiliation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability.

🎯 Who is this job for?

This role is suitable for a Senior/Principal-level backend engineer with 16+ years of experience designing and implementing large-scale distributed systems and leading technical strategy across teams.

The candidate should have strong skills in microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, SQL and NoSQL databases, caching, messaging systems, Java, Go or Python, cloud platforms, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, security, and AI-augmented development.

They should be experienced in architecting, scaling, optimizing, testing, deploying, and securing backend platforms, while mentoring engineers, influencing stakeholders, leading cross-functional initiatives, and preferably applying telecommunications or 3GPP EPC/5G Core knowledge.

💬 Potential Interview Questions

How would you architect a highly available backend platform for direct-to-device satellite connectivity?

I would use independently deployable, stateless microservices with clear ownership, durable data stores, asynchronous messaging, and multi-zone or multi-region deployment. The design would include failure isolation, retries with backoff, idempotency, health checks, automated recovery, and comprehensive observability.

How would you decide between REST and gRPC for a new backend API?

REST is generally suitable for externally consumed, browser-compatible, and resource-oriented APIs, while gRPC is useful for low-latency internal service-to-service communication with strongly typed contracts. I would evaluate compatibility, performance, streaming requirements, versioning, security, and operational complexity before deciding.

How would you design an event-driven service using Kafka or Pub/Sub?

I would define event schemas, partitioning keys, delivery guarantees, retention, consumer groups, and replay requirements up front. Consumers should be idempotent, handle poison messages through dead-letter topics, and expose lag and processing failures through monitoring and alerts.

How would you maintain consistency across distributed microservices?

I would avoid distributed transactions where possible and use local transactions combined with patterns such as transactional outbox, sagas, and compensating actions. The system should explicitly define consistency requirements and provide idempotent operations, correlation IDs, and reconciliation workflows.

How would you use Redis or Memcached to improve backend performance?

I would cache read-heavy, relatively stable data using suitable TTLs, bounded memory policies, and cache-aside or write-through strategies. I would also plan for cache invalidation, stampede protection, stale-data behavior, key versioning, and fallback to the source of truth when the cache is unavailable.

What Kubernetes practices would you apply to run production microservices reliably?

I would define resource requests and limits, readiness and liveness probes, disruption budgets, autoscaling policies, secure configuration management, and rolling or progressive deployments. Services should be isolated with namespaces and network policies, and their workloads should be observable through metrics, logs, and traces.

How would you design a CI/CD pipeline for a safety- and reliability-critical backend?

The pipeline should include linting, unit and integration tests, API contract tests, security and dependency scanning, container image validation, and infrastructure checks. Deployments should use immutable artifacts, environment promotion, canary or blue-green strategies, automated rollback, and auditable approvals where required.

How would you diagnose latency or reliability problems in a distributed service?

I would correlate distributed traces with structured logs, service-level metrics, dependency health, queue lag, database performance, and resource utilization. I would use defined SLOs and error budgets to prioritize investigation, then validate the fix with load tests, targeted experiments, and post-deployment monitoring.

What security controls are essential for backend APIs and cloud services?

Key controls include strong authentication and authorization, least-privilege IAM, encryption in transit and at rest, secure secret management, input validation, rate limiting, audit logging, and regular dependency and vulnerability scanning. Security should be integrated into design reviews, code reviews, CI/CD, and operational incident response.

How would your telecommunications knowledge influence backend design for 3GPP EPC or 5G Core systems?

I would account for standards-based interfaces, strict protocol contracts, session and subscriber state, mobility, signaling reliability, and interoperability with network functions and operators. Backend services should support high availability, low latency, precise observability, backward-compatible API evolution, and resilient behavior during intermittent satellite or terrestrial connectivity.

📋 Job Summary

Skylo is pioneering standards-based direct-to-device satellite connectivity, helping smartphones and IoT devices stay connected anywhere on Earth. As a Principal Software Engineer, Backend, you will architect and build scalable distributed systems, lead critical implementations, mentor engineers, and drive quality, security, performance, and technical strategy. The stack includes Java, Go, or Python; REST/gRPC, SQL/NoSQL, Redis, Kafka or RabbitMQ, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS/GCP/Azure, CI/CD, and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry. This is a full-time hybrid role in Bangalore with three office days per week; salary is not disclosed, and the opportunity offers competitive compensation, equity, comprehensive benefits, and the chance to shape the world’s first commercial live direct-to-device satellite network.