Senior Software Engineer — Backend - PHP, Node.js / Python - (f/m/d)

Location

Chennai, India — hybrid, with daily overlap with the German team

Experience

3–5 years professional backend engineering (Senior Engineer band — equivalent to SDE-2/SDE-3 or Software Engineer II)

Reports to

Team Lead at Germany

Notice period

Immediate to 30 days strongly preferred; up to 60 days considered for strong fits

Compensation

Best in the Industry.

About the role

You'll be one of the first set of Software engineers on the ground in Chennai GCC of newboxes, Germany; building the backend systems the product depends on. The core ask is straightforward: the right backend stack, and the ability to take a software requirement and own it end-to-end through the SDLC. Domain exposure (Industrial Systems & Decision Intelligence) is a bonus, not a prerequisite — we look for strong engineering fundamentals and grow the domain knowledge on the job.

Key responsibilities

1. Understand software requirements and take full ownership through the SDLC — design, build, test, deploy, and maintain
2. Design, build and maintain backend services and APIs that the product depends on
3. Make and document architecture decisions in collaboration with the Team at Germany
4. Own data modelling, performance, and reliability for the services you build
5. Contribute to early engineering standards and practices for the growing India team
6. Work async-first with the Germany-based team, with overlap hours for key syncs

Must-have skills

1. 3–5 years building production backend systems — PHP Laravel (or a comparable stack and ability to ramp up on PHP) and Node.js / Python
2. Solid grounding in API design, data modelling, and database fundamentals (SQL DBs required, NoSQL optional)
3. Experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred)
4. Demonstrated ability to take a requirement from spec to shipped service with minimal hand-holding
5. Strong hands-on CI practice — automated builds, tests,



and pipelines — is essential; working familiarity with CD and Infrastructure-as-Code is expected.
6. Comfort working in a small team with high autonomy, in hybrid mode.

Nice-to-have

1. Exposure to industrial, manufacturing, engineering, supply chain, ERP, or PLM domains — helpful context, not required
2. Experience in an early-stage or first-engineer-on-the-ground setup
3. Basic exposure to AI/ML, Enterprise AI, Agentic AI is a plus.

What success looks like in the first 90 days

1. Shipped and owns at least one production service independently
2. Actively contributing to backend architecture conversations with the Germany-based Team Lead
3. Comfortable with the team's async collaboration rhythm with German Time zone (CET/ CEST)

Working Model

- Work from our office in Chennai and/or in Hybrid mode.
- Close daily collaboration with our team in Germany, with at least 4 to 5 hours of overlap
- You will work closely with product, engineering, and domain experts rather than in isolation
- We build products for the long term and value getting things right over shipping fast

Your Perks

- Best in the Industry compensation
- 30 days paid vacation per year
- High technical ownership
- Long-term architectural responsibility
- Modern tech environment
- Direct, visible impact — your work shapes the product from day one, not buried in a massive codebase

Your application

If you want to build products end-to-end and help shape an engineering team from its earliest days, we'd love to hear from you.

About us newboxes is an engineering-focused management and innovation consultancy. We help industrial and manufacturing organizations solve hard problems in risk, safety, cost, and complexity — combining systems thinking with real, hands-on software engineering. Our team spans Germany and India, and Chennai is where we're building that engineering capability from the ground up.

If you want to build software that structures real industrial complexity rather than ship features in isolation, we'd like to hear from you.

📌 Senior Software Engineer — Backend - PHP, Node.js / Python (Chennai)
🏢 newboxes
📍 Chennai