Headline

Associate Technical Lead | Java, Spring-Boot, Apache-Kafka, MySQL | Fintech

About

Associate Technical Lead with 6+ years of backend development experience in Java, Spring Boot, and distributed microservice architectures. Proven ability to design, scale, and stabilize event-driven systems using Apache Kafka, improving throughput, fault tolerance, and reliability in fintech workflows. Experienced in payment integrations collectively handling multi-million-dollar payment volumes. Recognized for bringing engineering discipline — applying design patterns, modularity, and fail-fast principles across codebases and processes. Adept at documenting, designing, and standardizing frameworks for reviews and design discussions that uplift team quality. Effective leadership — mentoring, nurturing, and unblocking engineers while fostering ownership. Bridging backend, frontend, QA, PM, DevOps, and operations teams with empathy and precision to ensure seamless delivery. Always thinking long-term: proactively addressing tech debt, scalability, and process inefficiencies to build systems that last.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claude code

langchain

langgraph

Chroma

OpenRouter

Wispr Flow

Work experience

Associate Technical Lead at zenda, Jan 2025 - Present · 1 yr 8 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Zenda is a fintech platform helping families manage and pay school fees. Over the years, I’ve progressed from individual contributor to technical lead, shaping the architecture, scalability, and engineering discipline of Zenda’s payment ecosystem. Developed an automated payment system built on event-driven microservices with Spring Boot and Apache Kafka — enabling parallel debit processing across tenants and handling multi-million dollar payment volumes with high fault-tolerance. Led a 6-member team, driving deliverables through mentoring, unblocking, and technical reviews — ensuring quality and timely releases across BE and FE streams. Revamped the reenrolment reports module, reducing processing time and memory usage by over 80% through code and query optimization. Integrated multiple payment gateways (Lean, Razorpay, MoneyHash, DirectDebit, Noqodi, CamsPay, 2C2P) for both real-time and automated payments. Standardized engineering practices by introducing a code-review framework, checklists, and structured design discussions, embedding long-term design patterns and fail-fast principles into the workflow. Bridged multiple teams — PMs, QA, DevOps, Operations — ensuring technical alignment and clear communication during cross-functional delivery cycles. Established knowledge-sharing culture through organized KT sessions and centralized repositories for cross-team learning. Partnered directly with payment gateway tech teams for integration and POC fast-tracking — balancing external collaboration with internal delivery priorities. Through these initiatives, I’ve helped mature Zenda’s backend ecosystem into a scalable, maintainable, and process-driven system — while fostering a disciplined, design-oriented engineering culture.

Senior Software Engineer at zenda, Jan 2024 - Jan 2025 · 1 yr 1 mo, Hybrid

Software Engineer at zenda, Mar 2022 - Dec 2023 · 1 yr 10 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Research And Development Engineer at Resource Informatics Group, Inc, Feb 2021 - Feb 2022 · 1 yr 1 mo, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, Contributed to Onblick, a SaaS platform for HR and immigration compliance. Developed an ML-based OCR module using PyTorch and TensorFlow for document parsing, built a Python data pipeline from scratch, and containerized & deployed it with Docker and Kubernetes for scalable performance.

Software Engineer at NMSWorks Software (P) Ltd.,, Jun 2013 - Jun 2016 · 3 yrs 1 mo, Chennai Area, India, Worked on CygNet, a network management platform used by telecom operators to manage and monitor multi-vendor network devices through a unified interface. Automated Airtel’s network reconciliation process, aligning their inventory system (Metasolv) with live network data — reduced manual effort and maintenance cost by ~70%. Designed and implemented modules to detect and sync discrepancies between network inventory and actual network objects using Java, Hibernate, XML, and Oracle DB. Standardized data models for multi-vendor equipment (Alcatel, Huawei, etc.) into a unified schema, improving interoperability and reporting consistency. Collaborated with field telecom engineers to model new network elements and streamline the onboarding of vendor-specific configurations. Delivered end-to-end ownership of the reconciliation and upload process — earned appreciation from clients and senior engineers for reliability and robustness.

Education

Bachelor of Technology (BTech), Information Technology, College of Engineering Guindy

High School, Computer Science, The Sivakasi Lions Matric Hr Sec School

Public links

github: https://github.com/GauthamGuganesh