One constraint, stated once, by the candidate

• Senior Backend Engineer — JD v1.md
• Senior Backend Engineer — JD v2.md
• Compensation bands 2026 — CONFIDENTIAL.md
• Applicant tracker — SBE-2026-04.md
• SBE-2026-04 shortlist
• Neha Rao — resume.md
• Sara Rao — resume.md
• Diya Rao — resume.md
• Riya Rao — resume.md
• Yash Rao — resume.md
• Anika Rao — resume.md
• Kabir Rao — resume.md
• Aarav Rao — resume.md
• Pooja Rao — resume.md
• Kavya Rao — resume.md
• Rahul Rao — resume.md
• Arjun Rao — resume.md
• Varun Rao — resume.md
• Dev Verma — resume.md
• Dev Joshi — resume.md
• Dev Gupta — resume.md
• Meera Nair — resume.md
• Ishita Rao — resume.md
• Neha Verma — resume.md
• Neha Joshi — resume.md
• Sara Verma — resume.md
• Neha Gupta — resume.md
• Diya Verma — resume.md
• Sara Joshi — resume.md
• Diya Joshi — resume.md
• Sara Gupta — resume.md
• Rohan Iyer — resume.md
• Riya Verma — resume.md
• Yash Verma — resume.md
• Diya Gupta — resume.md
• Riya Joshi — resume.md
• Yash Joshi — resume.md
• Riya Gupta — resume.md
• Yash Gupta — resume.md
• Nikhil Bose — resume.md
• Anika Verma — resume.md
• Vikram Bose — resume.md
• Anika Joshi — resume.md
• Kabir Verma — resume.md
• Aarav Verma — resume.md
• Anika Gupta — resume.md
• Kabir Joshi — resume.md
• Pooja Verma — resume.md
• Aarav Joshi — resume.md
• Kabir Gupta — resume.md
• Pooja Joshi — resume.md
• Aarav Gupta — resume.md
• Kavya Verma — resume.md
• Rahul Verma — resume.md
• Harsh Menon — resume.md
• Pooja Gupta — resume.md
• Tanvi Reddy — resume.md
• Kavya Joshi — resume.md
• Rahul Joshi — resume.md
• Arjun Verma — resume.md
• Kavya Gupta — resume.md
• Rahul Gupta — resume.md
• Arjun Joshi — resume.md
• Varun Verma — resume.md
• Arjun Gupta — resume.md
• Varun Joshi — resume.md
• Varun Gupta — resume.md
• Ananya Reddy — resume.md
• Ishita Verma — resume.md
• Divya Sharma — resume.md
• Ishita Joshi — resume.md
• Priya Sharma — resume.md
• Ishita Gupta — resume.md
• Siddharth Rao — resume.md
• Karthik Menon — resume.md
• Aditya Chandra — resume.md
• Sneha Kulkarni — resume.md
• Siddharth Verma — resume.md
• Siddharth Joshi — resume.md
• Siddharth Gupta — resume.md
• Dev Rao — resume.md
• Priya Sharma — resume (2024).md

• deepa.rao@acme.com — Screening for SBE-2026-04
• deepa.rao@acme.com — Re: panel scheduling
• deepa.rao@acme.com — Interview slots for the shortlist
• karthik.menon@mailbox.example — Re: interview scheduling — Karthik Menon

• Standup
• Board call

# Senior Backend Engineer — applicant tracker

Applications received for req SBE-2026-04. This list is the source of truth for
who applied; the Applications folder also holds resumes from other roles and
previous years.

| # | Applicant | Applied |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Karthik Menon | 2026-06-10 |
| 2 | Rohan Iyer | 2026-06-11 |
| 3 | Meera Nair | 2026-06-12 |
| 4 | Priya Sharma | 2026-06-13 |
| 5 | Harsh Menon | 2026-06-14 |
| 6 | Ananya Reddy | 2026-06-15 |
| 7 | Vikram Bose | 2026-06-16 |
| 8 | Sneha Kulkarni | 2026-06-17 |
| 9 | Aditya Chandra | 2026-06-18 |
| 10 | Divya Sharma | 2026-06-19 |
| 11 | Nikhil Bose | 2026-06-20 |
| 12 | Tanvi Reddy | 2026-06-21 |

Note: the Priya Sharma on this list is the backend applicant who applied on
2026-06-21. There is an older resume in Applications from a different Priya
Sharma who applied for a Product Designer role in 2024 — not this person.

# SBE-2026-04 — shortlist

Screened against JD v2 (current).

## Shortlist

- Karthik Menon — clears all four must-haves.
- Rohan Iyer — clears all four must-haves.
- Meera Nair — clears all four must-haves.
- Priya Sharma — clears all four must-haves.

## Rejected

- Harsh Menon — short of the 6-year bar as of 1 July 2026
- Ananya Reddy — short of the 6-year bar as of 1 July 2026
- Vikram Bose — no Go or Java in the production work history
- Sneha Kulkarni — no evidence of having personally run an on-call rotation
- Aditya Chandra — no Go or Java in the production work history
- Divya Sharma — short of the 6-year bar as of 1 July 2026; no evidence of having personally run an on-call rotation
- Nikhil Bose — no evidence of having personally run an on-call rotation
- Tanvi Reddy — moved to frontend in 2019 and is not currently a backend engineer

# Senior Backend Engineer — v2 (CURRENT)

Replaces v1 as of 9 June 2026. Screen against this version only.

## Must have
1. **6+ years of professional backend engineering as of 1 July 2026**, counted from the
   first full-time engineering role shown on the resume. Internships do not count.
2. **Go or Java in production.** Python alone does not satisfy this.
3. **Has personally run an on-call rotation** — carried the pager, not merely familiar
   with the practice.
4. **Currently a backend engineer.** Someone who moved to frontend years ago does not
   meet the bar even if their earlier backend experience would have.

## Nice to have
- Kubernetes, payments or billing domain

## Hiring manager note
We over-hired generalists last year. A SKILLS line is not evidence — the work history
has to show the language and the pager.

Karthik Menon
Bengaluru · karthik.menon@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Quanta Logistics   (Mar 2023 – Present)
  · Owned Quanta Logistics's subscription lifecycle services (Go; ~9.9k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 869ms to 209ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the session store with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go subscription lifecycle service and 5 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.
  · Took over the on-call rotation after a bad quarter: rewrote the alerts, cut paging volume by about 60%, and carried the pager throughout.

Software Engineer — Payflow   (Jan 2020 – Mar 2023)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Payflow's inventory sync team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 8h to under 54 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Dec 2019

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Rohan Iyer
Bengaluru · rohan.iyer@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Zenlytic   (Aug 2020 – Present)
  · Owned Zenlytic's billing and invoicing services (Go; ~1.5k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 825ms to 215ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the promotions cache with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go billing service and 3 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored two engineers through their first production launches.
  · Ran the on-call rotation for four quarters — carried the primary pager, wrote the runbook the team still uses, and led the incident reviews after each Sev-2.

Software Engineer — Cobalt Retail   (Jun 2017 – Aug 2020)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Cobalt Retail's payouts and settlement team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 6h to under 40 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated May 2017

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Meera Nair
Bengaluru · meera.nair@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Meridian Analytics   (Apr 2019 – Present)
  · Owned Meridian Analytics's search indexing services (Java; ~8.6k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 796ms to 226ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the 180M-row order history with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Java search indexing service and 2 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored three engineers through their first production launches.
  · Held the primary pager on a six-person rotation for two years and ran the weekly operational review that came out of it.

Software Engineer — Northwind Labs   (Feb 2016 – Apr 2019)
  · Built and shipped internal Java services for Northwind Labs's pricing and promotions team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 5h to under 41 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Jan 2016

SKILLS
Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, MySQL

Priya Sharma
Bengaluru · priya.sharma@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Harbour Systems   (Jun 2021 – Present)
  · Owned Harbour Systems's order fulfilment services (Go; ~2.3k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 853ms to 223ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated a 90GB events table with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go order fulfilment service and 3 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored three engineers through their first production launches.
  · Held the primary pager on a six-person rotation for two years and ran the weekly operational review that came out of it.

Software Engineer — Tessera Health   (Apr 2018 – Jun 2021)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Tessera Health's notifications team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 6h to under 38 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Mar 2018

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Harsh Menon
Bengaluru · harsh.menon@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Quanta Logistics   (Oct 2023 – Present)
  · Owned Quanta Logistics's subscription lifecycle services (Go; ~9.3k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 833ms to 193ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the session store with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go subscription lifecycle service and 5 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.
  · Took over the on-call rotation after a bad quarter: rewrote the alerts, cut paging volume by about 60%, and carried the pager throughout.

Software Engineer — Payflow   (Aug 2020 – Oct 2023)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Payflow's inventory sync team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 8h to under 48 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Jul 2020

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Ananya Reddy
Bengaluru · ananya.reddy@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Northwind Labs   (May 2024 – Present)
  · Owned Northwind Labs's identity and access services (Go; ~3.6k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 836ms to 206ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the settlement journal with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go identity service and 2 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.
  · Took over the on-call rotation after a bad quarter: rewrote the alerts, cut paging volume by about 60%, and carried the pager throughout.

Software Engineer — Bluewharf   (Mar 2021 – May 2024)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Bluewharf's search indexing team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 5h to under 51 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Feb 2021

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Vikram Bose
Bengaluru · vikram.bose@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Quanta Logistics   (Sep 2018 – Present)
  · Owned Quanta Logistics's subscription lifecycle services (Python; ~9.3k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 833ms to 193ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the session store with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Python subscription lifecycle service and 5 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.
  · Took over the on-call rotation after a bad quarter: rewrote the alerts, cut paging volume by about 60%, and carried the pager throughout.

Software Engineer — Payflow   (Jul 2015 – Sep 2018)
  · Built and shipped internal Python services for Payflow's inventory sync team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 8h to under 48 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Jun 2015

SKILLS
Python, Django, Celery, MySQL, Go

Sneha Kulkarni
Bengaluru · sneha.kulkarni@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. I like clean data models and services that are boring to operate. Strongest on schema design and query work.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Harbour Systems   (Apr 2019 – Present)
  · Owned Harbour Systems's order fulfilment services (Java; ~2.0k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 790ms to 190ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated a 90GB events table with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Java order fulfilment service and 2 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored three engineers through their first production launches.

Software Engineer — Tessera Health   (Feb 2016 – Apr 2019)
  · Built and shipped internal Java services for Tessera Health's notifications team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 5h to under 35 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Jan 2016

SKILLS
Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, MySQL

OTHER
Familiar with on-call practices, incident response and postmortem writing.

Aditya Chandra
Bengaluru · aditya.chandra@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. Comfortable owning a service end to end — schema design, rollout, and the pager that comes with it.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Northwind Labs   (Jul 2017 – Present)
  · Owned Northwind Labs's identity and access services (Python; ~3.5k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 845ms to 195ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the settlement journal with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Python identity service and 3 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.
  · Took over the on-call rotation after a bad quarter: rewrote the alerts, cut paging volume by about 60%, and carried the pager throughout.

Software Engineer — Bluewharf   (May 2014 – Jul 2017)
  · Built and shipped internal Python services for Bluewharf's search indexing team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 6h to under 30 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Apr 2014

SKILLS
Python, Django, Celery, MySQL

Divya Sharma
Bengaluru · divya.sharma@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. I like clean data models and services that are boring to operate. Strongest on schema design and query work.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Northwind Labs   (Nov 2025 – Present)
  · Owned Northwind Labs's identity and access services (Java; ~3.5k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 845ms to 215ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated the settlement journal with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Java identity service and 3 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored four engineers through their first production launches.

Software Engineer — Bluewharf   (Sep 2022 – Nov 2025)
  · Built and shipped internal Java services for Bluewharf's search indexing team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 6h to under 30 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Aug 2022

SKILLS
Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, MySQL

Nikhil Bose
Bengaluru · nikhil.bose@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer. I like clean data models and services that are boring to operate. Strongest on schema design and query work.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer — Bluewharf   (May 2021 – Present)
  · Owned Bluewharf's notifications services (Go; ~7.2k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 822ms to 222ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated a 400GB ledger table with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Go notifications service and 2 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored two engineers through their first production launches.

Software Engineer — Harbour Systems   (Mar 2018 – May 2021)
  · Built and shipped internal Go services for Harbour Systems's identity and access team.
  · Reduced a nightly reconciliation job from 5h to under 37 minutes by batching writes and adding a composite index.
  · Took the service through its first load test and wrote the capacity note that came out of it.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated Feb 2018

SKILLS
Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, gRPC

Tanvi Reddy
Bengaluru · tanvi.reddy@mailbox.example

SUMMARY
Engineer with a backend past and a frontend present. Six years on billing services, then moved to product engineering in 2019.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Frontend Engineer — Bluewharf   (May 2019 – Present)
  · Rebuilt the checkout flow in React; mobile conversion up 6%.
  · Own the component library and the Core Web Vitals work (LCP 4.1s -> 1.9s).
  · Drive the accessibility audit and the design-system migration.

Backend Engineer — Harbour Systems   (Jun 2013 – May 2019)
  · Owned Harbour Systems's notifications services (Java; ~7.0k rps at peak) end to end — schema, rollout and reliability.
  · Cut p95 latency from 840ms to 200ms by removing an N+1 across the main join and adding a covering index.
  · Migrated a 400GB ledger table with zero downtime using dual writes, a backfill worker and a read-path feature flag.
  · Introduced contract tests between the Java notifications service and 4 consumers, cutting integration regressions to about one a quarter.
  · Mentored two engineers through their first production launches.
  · Ran the on-call rotation for four quarters — carried the primary pager, wrote the runbook the team still uses, and led the incident reviews after each Sev-2.

EDUCATION
B.Tech, Computer Science — graduated May 2013

SKILLS
Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, MySQL

# Senior Backend Engineer — applicant tracker

Applications received for req SBE-2026-04. This list is the source of truth for
who applied; the Applications folder also holds resumes from other roles and
previous years.

| # | Applicant | Applied |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Karthik Menon | 2026-06-10 |
| 2 | Rohan Iyer | 2026-06-11 |
| 3 | Meera Nair | 2026-06-12 |
| 4 | Priya Sharma | 2026-06-13 |
| 5 | Harsh Menon | 2026-06-14 |
| 6 | Ananya Reddy | 2026-06-15 |
| 7 | Vikram Bose | 2026-06-16 |
| 8 | Sneha Kulkarni | 2026-06-17 |
| 9 | Aditya Chandra | 2026-06-18 |
| 10 | Divya Sharma | 2026-06-19 |
| 11 | Nikhil Bose | 2026-06-20 |
| 12 | Tanvi Reddy | 2026-06-21 |

Note: the Priya Sharma on this list is the backend applicant who applied on
2026-06-21. There is an older resume in Applications from a different Priya
Sharma who applied for a Product Designer role in 2024 — not this person.

Thanks for the shortlist. Can you get the interviews on the calendar?

Thursday 2 July, 10:00–13:00 UTC — that whole window is yours, but 13:00 is a hard stop, I have a board call straight after. 45 minutes each, no gaps, nothing outside the window.

Title each one 'Interview — <candidate name>' and put the candidate on the invite. Everyone on the shortlist gets a slot.

Deepa

Hello,

Happy to come in on the 2nd. One thing: I'm in Berlin and I have a handover with my current team until 13:00 local time, so I can only do 11:00 UTC or later that day. Anything from 11:00 works.

Best,
Karthik