Please read carefully till the end before applying:
This is a founding role with no salary at this stage. Compensation is equity only. We’re looking for someone comfortable taking early-stage risk in exchange for long-term ownership.
About SambalPay
SambalPay is building a credit line and lending aggregation platform for Bharat users earning ₹12,000–₹40,000/month. Loan sizes range from ₹2,000 to ₹2 lakhs. We serve salaried workers, self-employed individuals, gig workers, and thin-file customers who are new to formal credit or underserved by traditional lenders.
We are not building growth-at-any-cost lending. We are building regulated lending infrastructure with:
- Transparent loan journeys (no hidden logic)
- Structured, EMI-based repayment
- Real NBFC partnerships with compliant capital flow
- Responsible underwriting from day one
- Strong control over defaults and risk
You will be accountable for:
- Architecture that won’t break at scale (from 10k to 1lac users)
- Compliance built into the system, not bolted on later.
- Risk and fraud controls designed as core primitives.
- Shipping fast without creating irreversible tech debt.
Lending Lifecycle Platform (end-to-end)
Design and implement the complete loan journey:
- Mobile-first onboarding + KYC orchestration
- Bureau integrations
- Alternative data integrations (where needed)
- Underwriting rules engine v1 (explainable + auditable)
- Loan approval + limit assignment logic
- Disbursal triggers
- EMI schedule generation
- Repayment tracking + delinquency states
- Collections workflow logic (system-level)
- Internal admin/ops dashboard
Non-negotiable: auditable, modular, and NBFC-compliance compatible.
Payments & Transaction Integrity
Build payments that are reliable, traceable, and safe:
- UPI disbursal flows
- UPI + mandate-based repayments (as applicable)
- IMPS/alternate fallbacks (where required)
- Webhook listeners + payment confirmations
- Idempotency, retries, reconciliation
- Internal ledger layer + settlement reporting
Goal: transactions cannot fail silently; everything is traceable.
NBFC / Bank Integrations & Multi-Partner Routing
SambalPay is partner-led (not a balance-sheet lender initially). You will:
- Integrate partner APIs and/or routing mechanisms
- Build partner-level data isolation
- Enable loan book reporting + settlement/reconciliation reporting
- Design for multi-partner routing without rebuilding core systems
Risk, Underwriting & Fraud Infrastructure
Lending companies die due to weak risk. You will:
- Build a rule-based risk engine (v1)
- Design an extensible decisioning system (ML-compatible later)
- Implement baseline fraud detection
- Create early delinquency signal tracking
- Ensure all decisioning is explainable and audit-ready
Security, Reliability & Compliance-by-Design
Implement security and reliability foundations:
- Encryption in transit and at rest
- RBAC (role-based access control)
- Immutable audit logs
- Secure API design + credential management
- Secure cloud configuration (AWS/GCP)
- Monitoring, alerting, backups, disaster recovery
- Defined RTO/RPO
Execution Roadmap
Phase 1: Zero to MVP (0–3 months)
- Define architecture + set up cloud infrastructure
- Build core lending engine + admin panel
- Integrate payments sandbox + partner sandbox APIs
- Monitoring/logging in place
Outcome: internal MVP simulating full loan lifecycle.
Phase 2: MVP to Live (3–6 months)
- Production-grade infra
- Live disbursals + repayments
- Bureau integration active
- Risk engine v1 in production
- Reconciliation + fraud baseline
Outcome: real users and disbursals with controlled risk.
Phase 3: Live to Scale (6–18 months)
- Asynchronous queues + event-driven processing
- Horizontal scaling + performance optimization
- Load/stress testing
- Analytics + data warehouse layer
- Infra cost control per borrower
- Multi-partner routing
Target: 1lac+ active borrowers without infra breakdown.
Experience (Must Have)
- 5–10 years in Indian fintech / lending / payments (or equivalent depth)
- Strong backend engineering (Python / Node.js / Go)
- Cloud architecture (AWS or GCP)
- Experience integrating with financial institutions / APIs
- Comfort handling sensitive financial data and audit trails
- Understanding of lending lifecycle + repayment mechanics
Desired skills
- Early-stage / founding engineer experience in Indian fintech space
- Built underwriting/decisioning systems for Indian consumers
- Shipped fintech from MVP → production users
- Exposure to collections systems
- Understanding of lending unit economics
This role is not for you if
- You need salary stability right now
- You prefer narrow ownership (only backend, only infra, etc.)
- You don’t want accountability for compliance-by-design and risk outcomes
How to Apply
Send:
- A short note on why you want to build SambalPay (equity-only, founding risk)
- 1–2 examples of systems you shipped (payments, lending, risk, reconciliation, scale)
- Links to GitHub/architecture write-ups (if available)
Subject line: “Founding CTO – SambalPay – [Your Name]” to [email protected].
