Freshworks: Senior Staff Engineer - Systems — Chennai, TN, India

About Freshworks

Freshworks develops cloud-based software for customer and employee experiences. Its product range includes customer support, sales and marketing automation, chat and IT service management. The employer names Freshdesk, Freshsales, Freshmarketer, Freshservice and Freshchat, supported by shared platform services. These applications address different operational needs, from managing customer conversations and sales activity to helping employees obtain IT services. The business emphasises software designed for end users and straightforward implementation.

The position and its setting

Freshworks lists Senior Staff Engineer - Systems in Chennai, TN, India, under reference REF1985H. The details below separate the work described by the employer from essential conditions, preferred experience and practical preparation advice.

• Employment type: Full-time
• Employer listing date: 22 September 2026
• Brands: Freshworks

Responsibilities and work described

• Overview:
• As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will serve as a core technical anchor, driving the architectural evolution of Freshworks' multi-tier SaaS platform
• In this role, you will:
• Scale Platform Capabilities: Architect and deliver resilient APIs, microservices, and web-layer platform features that support complex enterprise customer scenarios while drastically improving deployment velocity, system reliability, and low-latency performance
• Elevate Engineering Discipline: Act as a technical role model and mentor to young, ambitious engineers—fostering a culture rooted in clean coding standards, robust systems thinking, and long-term product ownership
• Bridge Business & Technology: Partner closely with cross-functional leaders across Architecture, Product Management, Design, QA, Operations, and Customer Success to turn high-level business visions into seamlessly integrated, high-performing software solutions
• Architecture & Roadmap Execution: Own and deliver the technical roadmap for your engineering domain; design, document, and execute scalable, cost-efficient, and low-latency platform solutions
• Hands-on Development: Write clean, maintainable, and high-performance code, building APIs and core platform features that scale seamlessly alongside Freshworks’ global growth
• System Health & Tech Debt Management: Identify critical architectural bottlenecks and technical debt; design and drive practical, iterative refactoring plans without compromising business delivery
• Operational Excellence & Production Leadership: Take ownership of complex production issues in distributed SaaS environments, driving deep-dive root-cause analyses (RCA) and implementing permanent preventive safeguards
• Quality & Process Standardization: Establish rigorous engineering standards through code reviews, automated testing, and CI/CD pipeline integration to continuously raise the quality bar
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Coach and develop engineers across functions, elevating their problem-solving capabilities, systems thinking, and operational discipline
• Security & Compliance: Ensure all platform designs and team practices strictly align with Freshworks information security standards and regulatory compliance protocols

Essential requirements and candidate background

• Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 12 to 15 years of hands-on software engineering and systems/platform engineering experience within modern distributed SaaS environments
• Architectural Ownership: track record of owning end-to-end architecture and technical strategy for large-scale products or core platform infrastructure
• Production Scale: Demonstrated history of building, shipping, and maintaining high-availability, low-latency, and high-throughput systems operating under assertive deployment schedules
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Extensive experience collaborating with and influencing multi-disciplinary teams (Product, QA, Ops, Design) to drive consensus and alignment
• Core Backend Expertise: Expert-level mastery in Java (Spring/Spring Boot) or Python for high-scale backend services development
• Distributed Systems Architecture: Deep proficiency in multi-tier application architecture, microservices design, RESTful APIs, messaging queues, and database layer optimization
• CS Fundamentals: command of data structures, algorithms, advanced Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts, and design patterns
• SaaS Troubleshooting & Linux: Advanced knowledge of Linux internals, production debugging, log analysis, and system telemetry in distributed Cloud/SaaS setups
• Engineering Quality & DevOps: experience with CI/CD automation, unit/integration testing frameworks, and writing clean, maintainable code with minimal abstraction
• Soft Skills & Technical Leadership: written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to both technical panels and executive stakeholders

Location, schedule and contract conditions

• Work arrangement: Hybrid
• Advertised location: Chennai, TN, India

Pay and application dates

A verified salary figure is not established in this article. An online estimate for another Senior Staff Engineer - Systems vacancy is not an offer for reference REF1985H; use the employer’s own pay disclosure and recruitment communication.

A closing date is not confirmed in this article. Check the current employer page before submitting: an undated posting can change or be withdrawn.

How to apply to Freshworks

Applications follow the official employer page linked below.

Open the official Freshworks posting below and match the title and reference REF1985H.

Compare your qualifications and experience with the essential conditions for the Chennai, TN, India position, then read the preferred criteria separately.

Prepare an accurate CV and the supporting items requested in that employer’s application. Provide only information and documents you are authorised to share.

Use the employer’s application option, complete the required fields and review the submission. Retain the acknowledgement when one is provided. Job Alerts World does not receive the application.

Practical preparation: Python

Python work is easier to assess through a concrete example than a list of libraries. Explain the problem, the input data, the parts you implemented and how you checked the output. Include a repository or a short technical note when you can share it.

Relevant skills

• Python
• Java
• CI/CD
• APIs
• compliance
• root-cause analysis
• Linux
• API development
• stakeholder management