Company Description

Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Japan has established a new Digital Innovation entity in India to accelerate growth through customer intelligence, digital platforms, connected experiences, and next-generation mobility solutions.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, this organization will combine Honda's global scale with India's technology ecosystem to build capabilities that directly influence product strategy, customer growth, and new business creation across India and other high-growth markets.

Role Description

We are looking for a Senior Software Architect / Engineering Lead to define the technical direction for Honda's core digital platforms, including the MyHonda App, Honda Connect App, and other customer-facing web and mobile products.

This is a leadership and architecture role for someone who has earned deep technical credibility through years of hands-on engineering, and now wants to apply that expertise to system design, technical governance, and team leadership rather than day-to-day coding. You will lead a small in-house engineering team while acting as the primary technical counterpart to our engineering vendor - setting architecture, reviewing design decisions, holding the line on engineering quality, and ensuring the vendor team delivers reliable, high-performance digital experiences to millions of Honda customers.

Key Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end technical architecture for Honda's digital platforms across web and mobile, and define standards for scalability, security, and performance
Lead and mentor a small in-house engineering team, while acting as the primary technical interface to the external engineering vendor
Own code quality across the entire engineering org (in-house + vendor): personally conduct code reviews for critical/high-risk changes, and establish a rigorous, scalable code review process (standards, checklists, tooling, approval gates) for all other changes across both teams
Define and enforce coding best practices — style guides, design patterns, testing standards, documentation norms — and audit adherence across the vendor's delivery on an ongoing basis, not just at review time
Review and approve the vendor's system designs, API contracts, and architectural decisions; push back and course-correct where needed
Set and enforce engineering best practices, code quality standards, and technical governance across both in-house and vendor teams
Translate product and business requirements into clear technical specifications and architectural roadmaps for the vendor to execute against
Evaluate technical trade-offs, identify architectural risks, performance bottlenecks, and technical debt across the stack, and hold teams accountable for resolving them
Drive technical design reviews, sprint/release planning, and architecture governance forums involving both internal and vendor stakeholders
Partner closely with product, design, QA, and platform teams to ensure technical solutions align with business goals
Continuously evaluate and advocate for better tools, patterns, and engineering practices across the extended engineering organization
Stay hands-on enough (through code/design reviews, prototyping, or spot-checks) to maintain real technical credibility with both the in-house team and the vendor — this is not a purely managerial role

Qualifications

Required

8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including significant time in frontend and backend development, with a demonstrated transition into architecture and/or technical leadership
Proven experience designing systems at scale — strong, well-formed opinions on architecture, API design, data flows, and engineering best practices
Prior experience leading or mentoring engineering teams, and/or managing/overseeing external vendors or outsourced engineering teams
Demonstrated experience defining and running code review processes/standards for a team or organization, not just participating in them
Deep familiarity with modern frontend frameworks (React.js or equivalent) and mobile frameworks (React Native or equivalent), sufficient to review and challenge vendor architecture and implementation choices
Strong backend architecture experience: Node.js, Java, Python, or equivalent — able to design and evaluate APIs, microservices, and data pipelines
Solid grounding in system design, data structures, algorithms, and software architecture principles
Experience with RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and third-party service integrations
Strong understanding of relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, or equivalent) and how to architect for them at scale
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git-based workflows, and agile delivery models, including in distributed/vendor-based team setups
A track record of shipping and owning complex features or platforms in high-traffic production environments

Preferred

Experience specifically managing or partnering with outsourced/contracted engineering vendors, including defining SOWs, technical KPIs, or delivery governance
Experience building consumer-grade mobile apps at scale (React Native, Swift, or Kotlin)
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
Exposure to connected vehicle platforms, telematics, or IoT ecosystems
Experience with observability tooling: logging, monitoring, alerting, and crash analytics (Firebase, Datadog, Sentry, or equivalent)
Background in mobility, automotive, fintech, or high-scale B2C product environments

Why join

Shape the technical architecture for products used daily by millions of Honda customers across India
Own high-leverage architectural decisions across frontend, backend, APIs, and platform services without being buried in day-to-day ticket work
Build and lead a lean, high-trust in-house team while directing a larger extended engineering organization
Work at the intersection of mobility, connected vehicles, and digital platforms
Strong long-term growth opportunity within Honda's global digital ecosystem