Technical Lead- Product Engineering (F&B Tech)

Role Summary

We are building a POS system and customer loyalty platform for the F&B (restaurant/cafe/QSR) industry from the ground up. The Technical Lead will own the entire technical architecture - from POS terminal software and kitchen display systems to the loyalty engine, payment integrations, and cloud backend - and will be the single point of technical accountability for the founder. This is a hands-on role: 60-70% coding/architecture, 30-40% leading the developer and making technical decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• System Architecture: Design the overall architecture for the POS application (billing, KOT/kitchen display, inventory, table management) and the customer loyalty app (points, tiers, coupons, referrals), ensuring both can run reliably in low/no-internet environments common in F&B outlets.
• Integration Ownership: Lead integration with payment gateways (Razorpay, PayU, Paytm, UPI), POS hardware (thermal printers, barcode scanners, cash drawers, card swipe machines), SMS/WhatsApp APIs for loyalty notifications, and accounting/inventory tools (Tally, Zoho Books) as needed.
• Hands-on Development: Build core backend services and critical frontend modules personally, particularly anything involving payments, security, or data integrity.
• Database & Data Architecture: Design schemas for multi-outlet transactions, real-time inventory deduction, customer loyalty ledgers, and reporting-optimised for both speed at the billing counter and accuracy in back-office reports.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure PCI-DSS-aligned handling of payment data, secure API authentication, role-based access control (cashier vs manager vs owner), and data encryption at rest and in transit.
• DevOps & Deployment: Set up CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure or DigitalOcean for cost efficiency), staging vs production environments, automated backups, and monitoring/alerting.
• Code Quality: Conduct code reviews for the developer's work, enforce coding standards, write technical documentation, and maintain a clean, scalable codebase.
• Technical Decision-Making: Choose the right tech stack, third-party tools vs build-in-house tradeoffs, and manage technical debt against business deadlines.
• People & Delivery: Break down the product roadmap into sprints, assign and review the developer's tasks, and report progress directly to the founder in business terms, not just technical jargon.
• Offline-First Engineering: Specifically design the POS billing module to work offline and auto-sync transactions when connectivity returns-this is a hard requirement for F&B outlets with unreliable internet.

Required Technical Skills

Backend: Strong command of Node.js (Express/NestJS) or Java (Spring Boot) or Python (Django/FastAPI); RESTful and/or GraphQL API design; microservices or modular monolith experience.

• Frontend / Mobile: React.js for web admin dashboards; React Native or Flutter for the loyalty mobile app and/or POS tablet app.
• Database: PostgreSQL or MySQL for transactional data; Redis for caching/session management; experience designing for high write-throughput (billing) and consistent reporting.
• Cloud & DevOps: AWS, GCP, or Azure (EC2/Compute, S3/Storage, RDS); Docker containerisation; basic Kubernetes is a plus but not mandatory at this scale; CI/CD via GitHub Actions or GitLab CI.
• Payments: Hands-on integration experience with at least one Indian payment gateway (Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree) and UPI deep-linking.
• POS/Hardware: Prior exposure to ESC/POS thermal printer protocols, barcode/QR scanner integration, or any retail/restaurant hardware integration is strongly preferred.
• Security: Understanding of OAuth2/JWT authentication, encryption standards, and PCI-DSS basics for handling card data.
• Version Control & Collaboration: Git/GitHub, Agile/Scrum delivery, and comfort working in a fully remote, async-friendly environment.

Preferred (Nice to Have)

Prior experience building or working on a POS, ERP, or loyalty/CRM system, ideally in F&B, retail, or hospitality.

• Experience with real-time systems (WebSockets) for kitchen display updates or order tracking.
• Familiarity with multi-tenant SaaS architecture, since this product may eventually be licensed to other restaurant brands.
• Exposure to analytics/BI tools for sales dashboards (Metabase, simple custom dashboards).

Who should Apply

Someone who has either led a small engineering team before, or has 5+ years of strong individual contributor experience and is ready to step into ownership. You should be comfortable being the only senior technical voice in the company in the early days - making calls independently, documenting decisions clearly, and being directly answerable to the founder for technical outcomes.