SDE 3

As an SDE 3 at Porter, you will own and build large, business-critical systems operating at scale. This role goes beyond coding; you'll design scalable architectures, make thoughtful trade-offs, influence engineering standards, and mentor other engineers while working closely with product and business stakeholders. You are expected to think from first principles, leverage AI responsibly, and build systems that are reliable, observable, and cost-aware.
The core responsibilities for the job include the following:
Technical and System Design:
Design, build, and own scalable, high-availability distributed systems handling millions of transactions.
Drive low-level and high-level design, including APIs, data models, and service architectures.
Perform capacity planning and back-of-the-envelope calculations, and identify system bottlenecks early.
Ensure engineering excellence across reliability, observability, security, and cost optimization.
Coding and Execution:
Write clean, maintainable, and testable production-grade code.
Apply SOLID principles, design patterns, and sound engineering practices.
Use AI tools to accelerate development while critically evaluating outputs, knowing when to use AI and when not to.
Ownership and Delivery:
Own end-to-end delivery of systems from design to production and long-term maintenance.
Drive projects with high autonomy, handle ambiguity, and deliver under tight timelines.
Participate actively in operational reviews, incident management, and system improvements.
Collaboration and Leadership:
Collaborate closely with product, data, and business teams to balance tech decisions with real-world logistics constraints.
Mentor junior engineers, influence code quality, and help raise the engineering bar.
Contribute to hiring, technical interviews, and culture-building initiatives.
Requirements:
4+ years of software development experience (SDE 3 or equivalent role).
Proven experience owning and scaling production systems.
Experience working in fast-paced, high-ownership environments (startups or scale-ups preferred).
Technical Skills:
Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented design.
Hands-on experience with system design at scale.
Familiarity with modern backend stacks, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure.
Strong understanding of engineering operations: monitoring, alerting, reliability, and performance tuning.
AI and First-Principles Thinking:
Ability to use AI as a productivity tool, not a crutch.
Strong judgment to validate AI-generated outputs and reason independently.
Comfortable breaking down complex problems to fundamentals rather than pattern-matching solutions.
Leadership and Mindset:
Strong sense of ownership and accountability (Own It).
User-first thinking with an understanding of business impact (user obsession).
Bias for action and execution in ambiguous situations (Keep Moving).
Collaborative, empathetic, and resilient under pressure.
Desire to raise the bar for talent, quality, and execution.

Experience
4-8 yrs