Rahul Sharma — Engineering Manager

Engineering Manager with 9+ years building high-scale systems across fintech and e-commerce Leading a 25+ member engineering team across 3 specialised teams (Pricing, Reconciliation, and Disputes) at PhonePe, which processes 360M+ transactions daily. I work across growth engineering and central platforms - managing one of the highest transaction volumes in global fintech. I oversee highly distributed systems that handle billions of events with real-time multi-party reconciliation across banks, merchants, and payment networks. Current Impact at PhonePe: → Massive Scale: Built systems processing 360M+ daily transactions with complex multi-party reconciliation and automated dispute resolution → Financial Infrastructure: Architected central pricing engines managing settlements, fund transfers, and dispute workflows for India's largest payment platform → Growth Engineering: Drive initiatives that directly impact user acquisition and engagement at a population scale → Technical Leadership: Managing 25+ engineers while building analytics and observability stacks for operational excellence Technical Expertise: Java, Django, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Elasticsearch, Kafka, ZooKeeper, JavaScript, and distributed event processing systems. Previously built the offers ecosystem processing 100M+ rewards daily and 5B+ events, reducing computation latency from 1 second to 100ms.. My unique edge: I've worked across the full spectrum - from 0-to-1 products at startups to now managing population-scale systems. This combination helps me make strategic tradeoffs considering business impact, long-term cost, and system scalability, whether building new products or scaling existing ones. Having built products for both hundreds and hundreds of millions of users, I understand what it takes to create a robust financial infrastructure that serves Bharat's digital payments needs. Open to connecting with engineering leaders solving complex problems at scale.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Fintech and E-commerce expert with strong backend development and system architecture skills.

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Experience: 9 yrs 7 mos

Skills

Engineering Management
System Design / Architecture
Backend Development
System Design
System Architecture
Software Development

Career Highlights

Built systems processing 360M+ daily transactions.
Architected central pricing engines for India's largest payment platform.
Led a team of 25+ engineers in high-scale environments.

Work Experience

PhonePe

Engineering Manager (2 yrs 8 mos)

Senior Software Engineer (3 yrs)

Swiggy

Senior Software Engineer (1 yr 5 mos)

Niflr

Founding Senior Software Engineer (9 mos)

TechRacers

Software Developer (1 yr 9 mos)

National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI)

Summer Intern (2 mos)

Education

Startup School - SUS 2022 at Y Combinator

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) at Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad

high school at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya - JNV

Rahul Sharma

Engineering Manager

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India9 yrs 7 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Built systems processing 360M+ daily transactions.
Architected central pricing engines for India's largest payment platform.
Led a team of 25+ engineers in high-scale environments.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Fintech and E-commerce expert with strong backend development and system architecture skills.

Contact

rahul.sharma.sai@gmail.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Engineering ManagementSystem Design / ArchitectureBackend DevelopmentSystem DesignSystem ArchitectureSoftware Development

Other Skills

AWSAerospikeAmazon Web Services (AWS)Apache MesosCC++Cross-functional Team LeadershipData StructuresDatabasesDevOpsDistributed SystemsDjangoDockerDropWizardElasticsearch

About

Experience

Phonepe

2 roles

Engineering Manager

Promoted

Jul 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 8 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Leading financial suite of products, Pricing & Monetisation, Recon and Dispute teams
Leading a high-impact, distributed team of 25+ engineers across Pricing, Monetisation, Reconciliation, and Disputes, managing complex systems processing 360M+ daily transactions with six-nines uptime. Responsible for architectural decisions, stakeholder management, and driving operational excellence in India’s largest payment platform.
Key contributions:
Built and scaled resilient systems ensuring real-time multi-party reconciliation across banks, merchants, and payment networks.
Architected Offers, central pricing and reconciliation platforms powering transaction monetisation, pricing, receivable vs payable reconciliation, and automated dispute resolution workflows.
Established engineering best practices in observability, audits, and governance to ensure compliance and operational rigour.
Facilitating people's growth through mentorship, team organisation, and promoting a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

Distributed SystemsEngineering ManagementSystem Design / ArchitectureTeam BuildingCross-functional Team LeadershipJava+7

Senior Software Engineer

Jun 2020 – Jun 2023 · 3 yrs · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Key contributor in Growth Backend Engineering, leading the Offers ecosystem responsible for 100M+ daily rewards grants and handling 35k+ QPS. Driving core pipelines and event-driven systems processing 5B+ events daily to compute real-time rewards.
Re-architected legacy offer system to support 10x scale, reducing reward computation latency from 1s to 100ms.
Developed Cumulus, an aggregation abstraction library leveraging Aerospike and HBase for efficient data handling.
Built Mustang, an expression search engine using inverted index concepts, improving evaluation latency tenfold (100ms to 10ms).
Led Incentivization pod deliverables and mentored 3 junior engineers.
Automated offer dispute resolution through the development of the Offers Bot.
Tech stack: Java, DropWizard, Kafka, MariaDB, HBase, Aerospike, RabbitMQ, Docker, Apache Mesos, Marathon.

JavaDropWizardKafkaMariaDBHBaseAerospike+6

Swiggy

Senior Software Engineer

Jan 2019 – Jun 2020 · 1 yr 5 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Key member of Swiggy’s innovation arm(Swiggy Labs) focused on pioneering new business lines and technologies. Led backend development for Breakfast preordering (Droppt), driving 20% uplift in new user acquisition and enabling 200k+ daily orders at scale. Spearheading the development of ZIPI, an RFID-based self-checkout vending machine, marking Swiggy’s entry into offline retail.
Technologies: Python, Django, Elasticsearch, Postgres, Kubernetes, Docker, Google Cloud Platform, Electron.

PythonDjangoElasticsearchPostgresKubernetesDocker+4

Niflr

Founding Senior Software Engineer

Apr 2018 – Jan 2019 · 9 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

Joined as the first employee and architected the entire technology stack for India’s omni-channel self-checkout grocery retail platform. Led a 7-member tech team, overseeing architecture, code reviews, and release processes.
Designed and implemented a catalogue management system leveraging Elasticsearch and Redis for location-based inventory.
Developed Order Management (OMS), Inventory Management (IMS), and fulfillment systems to support retail operations.
Set up Kubernetes and Elasticsearch clusters, automating CI/CD pipelines for scalable infrastructure.
Built an Electron-based desktop POS app integrated with thermal printers for a seamless self-checkout experience.
Contributed to franchise support systems, enhancing business scalability.
Tech stack: Node.js, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes, Docker, Postgres, Electron, Gulp, AWS.

Node.jsElasticsearchRedisRabbitMQKubernetesDocker+6

Techracers

Software Developer

Jun 2016 – Mar 2018 · 1 yr 9 mos · Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India

Improved the e-commerce platform by integrating Elasticsearch, optimising performance, and scaling Redis. Led initiatives allowing sellers to launch their private white-label stores similar to Shopify, along with order and payout systems, and integrated payment gateways.