Engineering Manager - Platform

Engineering Manager (Platform) Own the shared services that a billion people's commerce will run on. Delhi / Bengaluru (Work from Office) | 8+ years | 5 days WFO About ONDC This is the platform that a billion people's commerce will run on. ONDC's shared services sit at the very core of the network — the reusable foundations every application and network participant is built upon. That is where you come in. The Role This is a platform-builder's role for someone who loves distributed systems. You'll own the shared services at the core of ONDC, and be instrumental in solving problems at national scale, engineering for the throughput, reliability and reach of an entire country. You'll spot commonalities across projects and build things the "platformic" way, act as the technical gate for every new service, and enforce this through process with the Architects — all while staying deeply hands-on with the code. You'll also champion agent-assisted, AI-driven software development. This is a high-ownership role reporting to Engineering Leadership and partnering closely with the Application Architect. What You'll Own Think in platforms — find commonalities across projects and build reusable services, not one-offs. Gate new services — decide what belongs in an existing platform vs. a genuinely new service, and prevent duplication. Enforce through process — partner with the Architects on standards, design reviews and reuse-by-default. Champion AI-assisted engineering — adopt and spread agent-assisted software development best practices, and lead by example. Stay deeply hands-on — write and review code, prototype and debug alongside the team. Mentor and deliver — grow junior engineers and ship many concurrent projects with predictable quality. Own scale and reliability — build dependable, observable, high-throughput services on solid distributed-computing and data foundations. What Success Looks Like You become the owner of ONDC's platform layer — someone who can turn repeated one-off needs into reusable building blocks teams actually adopt, while keeping shared services reliable at national scale. What We're Looking For 8+ years in software engineering, including 3+ years managing and mentoring, while staying hands-on. Proven track record building and operating platform / shared services used by many teams. Strong platform thinking — turning repeated, one-off needs into reusable building blocks. Deep systems and API design (REST, gRPC, event-driven) and distributed-systems experience. Strong distributed-computing and data-engineering foundations — streaming and large-scale processing with technologies like Kafka, Spark and modern data platforms. Hands-on fluency with agent-assisted software development best practices, with a track record of moving teams in that direction. Sound build-vs-reuse-vs-consolidate judgment, with experience enforcing standards alongside architects. A strong plus Exposure to ONDC / Beckn or similar open-network ecosystems | experience with registries, gateways, identity/credentialing, data platforms, or observability at scale | experience establishing platform governance or internal developer platforms. This Role Is For You If... You love distributed systems and want to own the platform they run on, not a single application. You enjoy gating and preventing duplication as much as building new services. You want to stay hands-on with code even as you manage and mentor a team. And you want a rare mix of deep distributed-systems challenge, startup autonomy, and real public purpose. Why ONDC? You'll own the core of one of the world's largest open commerce networks, engineered to reach every corner of India. You won't just manage a platform team. You will define how ONDC builds. Read more about ONDC (click to read) Visit our website at ondc.org McKinsey Report Our latest newsletter