sonali.sidana/tech-lead
Senior Full-Stack Engineer · Tech Lead · Digii

A tech lead who
never stopped
writing the code.

I’m Sonali. I lead engineers and I still ship the work — Java in the morning, React after lunch, and enough AWS to keep things upright. Six years and three roles at the same SaaS, full-stack by temperament, on-call by choice. The most expensive bugs always live in the seams between layers — so I spend most of my time there.

See experienceResume (PDF)
basedbengaluru, india
stackjava · spring boot · react · mysql · aws
vibegeneralist, hands-on, allergic to vanity metrics
sonali@platform — zsh — 92×24
~ • main
sonali@platform:~❯whoami
{
"name": "Sonali Sidana",
"role": "Senior Full-Stack Engineer + Tech Lead",
"company": "Digii · Bengaluru",
"team": "8 (6 devs + 2 QA)",
"stack": ["java", "react", "mysql", "aws", "terraform"],
"shipping_since": 2020
}
sonali@platform:~❯platform --growth
platform.users 20K → 300K+ (15×)
platform.institutions30 → 200+
modules.shipped 15+ end-to-end
platform.uptime 99.9% across on-call services
sonali@platform:~❯cat principles.md | head -4
▸stay hands-on, even as lead
▸generalist over specialist
▸grow engineers, not output
▸observability is a precondition
sonali@platform:~❯
live snapshot · production environment
01 What I actually do

It's all one job, told four ways.

“Tech lead” is a job title that hides four jobs. Here’s what I’m actually doing on a normal week — and what I’d want to keep doing in the next role.

no. 01

Generalist by trade

I work across the whole stack on purpose.

Java, React, MySQL, AWS in a typical week — plus enough Terraform and AngularJS to be dangerous when something needs a touch-up. The most expensive bugs live in the seams between layers, so the seams are where I want to be.

backendfrontenddbinfra
no. 02

Lead while shipping

A lead who stops coding stops knowing.

Still write production Spring Boot daily — currently leading Attachment Service architecture and the Feed Revamp end-to-end. Credibility with the team comes from being in the same files they are.

designreviewshipon-call
no. 03

Hire and grow engineers

The highest-leverage work isn’t the roadmap.

Lead a team of 7 — five devs, two QA, a few of whom I helped hire. I also run interview loops for other teams; got recognised once for taking the most interviews in a quarter. 1:1s, perf reviews, the unglamorous people work — that’s where roadmap velocity actually comes from.

hireinterview1:1smentor
no. 04

Own the architecture

Systems get the operations they were designed for.

System design reviews, reliability standards, tech-debt decisions. Built the observability stack from scratch so the team stopped relearning the same incident every quarter.

designSLOsreliabilitygovernance
02 How I lead

Four principles I actually run on.

These aren’t aspirational — they’re the ones I’d want a new hire to inherit on day one. Each one shows up in how the team operates, not just how we talk.

01

Stay hands-on, even as lead

A lead who stops shipping stops understanding the system. I still write production Java/Spring Boot daily — leading Attachment Service architecture and the Feed Revamp end-to-end. Code is where credibility is earned.

02

Generalist over specialist

The whole stack is one product. I move across Java, React, MySQL, AWS, and Terraform because the most expensive bugs live in the seams between them. Owning the seam is the work.

03

Grow engineers, not output

Roadmap velocity follows from people who feel ownership over what they ship. Hiring, 1:1s, and performance reviews aren’t overhead — they’re the highest-leverage work a tech lead does.

04

Observability is a precondition

If you can’t observe it, you’ll relearn the same incident every quarter. I built Digii’s observability stack from scratch — Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, New Relic, JavaMelody — so SLOs and incident detection are the default, not a polish phase.

03 Experience

Six years. One company. Three roles.

Same company, four role bumps, one platform that quietly went from 20K students to 300K+ underneath us. Each role is a step deeper into the systems that hold it all together.

Jun 2024 — Present
Bengaluru

Senior Product Engineer II · Tech Lead

Digii
  • Hands-on in daily development — writing production Java/Spring Boot, leading Attachment Service architecture and Feed Revamp end-to-end.
  • Lead a 7-person team (5 devs, 2 QA) shipping to 300K+ students across 200+ institutions. Help hire onto the team, run 1:1s and performance reviews, and drive sprint delivery with minimal process overhead. Run interview loops for other teams too — recognised one quarter for taking the most interviews company-wide.
  • Collaborate directly with PMs from problem definition to production. Shape requirements, assess feasibility, and make product–engineering trade-offs without waiting for consensus.
  • Built an observability stack from scratch — Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, New Relic, JavaMelody — with proactive SLO tracking and incident detection across all production services.
  • Own architectural governance across the platform — system design reviews, reliability standards, and tech-debt decisions.
  • Use AI tooling (Claude, Codex) to accelerate delivery without giving up code quality.
Jul 2022 — May 2024
Bengaluru

Senior Product Engineer I

Digii
  • Spearheaded end-to-end delivery of 15+ modules — Campus Help Centre, Meeting Management, Asset Management, Marketplace, Venue Booking, Infrastructure Management — across the full stack (Java, Spring Boot, React, MySQL, AWS).
  • Carried the platform through a heavy growth phase — user base scaled past 200K students and the institution count crossed 150 while I was on these modules.
  • Designed and deployed a multi-node Elasticsearch architecture for full-text search across the multi-tenant platform — cut search latency by ~40%.
  • Managed system uptime via on-call rotations and critical incident resolution; maintained 99.9% service availability through root-cause analysis and long-term remediation.
  • Streamlined infra provisioning with Terraform + Python scripts automating AWS resource setup (EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, SQS) — reduced manual setup time by ~70%.
Aug 2020 — Jun 2022
Bengaluru

Product Engineer I → II

Digii
  • Joined when the platform had ~20K users — a small generalist team and a lot to build. Contributed across backend, frontend, DB, and infra from day one.
  • Delivered Gate Pass (student/warden/security approval workflows), Hostel Attendance, Mess Management, and Transport modules end-to-end — cutting admin workload by ~90% and manual tracking by ~80%.
  • Resolved critical API performance bottlenecks via Redis caching, composite indexing, and query optimisation — improved response times by 70–80% across high-traffic endpoints.
  • Built workflow automation APIs in Java/Spring Boot deployed across 100+ campuses; modernised the frontend from ES5 to ES6 and seeded a reusable AngularJS component library adopted across teams.
04 Tooling

Stack I actually reach for.

Grouped by what they’re for, not what’s trending. The boring ones are doing most of the work.

Backend
JavaSpring BootREST APIsMicroservicesRedis
Cloud & Infra
AWSEC2S3RDSLambdaSQSCloudWatchAthenaTerraformDocker
Data & Search
MySQLElasticsearch (multi-node)NoSQL
Observability
PrometheusGrafanaLokiNew RelicJavaMelody
Frontend
ReactAngularJSTypeScriptJavaScript (ES6)HTMLCSS
Leadership & Workflow
Team LeadershipSystem ArchitectureAgile / ScrumGitClickUpAI-assisted dev (Claude, Codex)
05 Projects

Selected project work.

A cloud-agnostic file storage microservice built with Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and presigned uploads, designed around multi-tenant metadata and provider switching across R2 and S3.

Featured repository
GitHub

Cloud-Agnostic File Storage Microservice

A Spring Boot file storage service with presigned uploads, backend fallback, demo-tenant onboarding, and zero-code provider switching.

The core idea is keeping storage concerns behind a clean `StorageProvider` abstraction so the app can move between Cloudflare R2 and AWS S3 without touching business logic. On top of that, the service handles tenant-scoped metadata in PostgreSQL, public demo tenant creation for frontend testing, and a practical upload flow that prefers direct browser-to-storage transfer but still has a backend multipart fallback when needed.

  • Uses presigned URLs so files usually upload directly to object storage instead of passing through the backend.
  • Includes a backend multipart fallback path for demo and recovery scenarios when direct browser upload is blocked.
  • Creates demo tenants through a public endpoint so a frontend can bootstrap itself and store an API key locally for testing.
  • Tracks tenant-scoped metadata, upload state, and aggregate usage metrics in PostgreSQL while keeping provider switching environment-driven.
View repositoryAll repositories
06 More on GitHub

More code lives on GitHub.

Smaller utilities, experiments, and backend playgrounds live here too. If you want the broader repo shelf beyond the featured project, this is the fastest way in.

Browse all repositories
incident-explainer
Incident intelligence for quicker debugging and clearer postmortems.
Java·github.com/sonalisidana13
notification-service
Event-driven notifications, delivery orchestration, scalable messaging.
Java·github.com/sonalisidana13
07 Let’s talk

Building something that needs to keep working?

Open to Senior Full-Stack and Tech Lead conversations — especially platform, reliability, and developer-productivity work. I read every message.

sonalisidana13@gmail.comLinkedInGitHub
statusopen
timezoneIST · UTC+5:30
responsewithin 48h
looking forfull-stack · tech lead · open to relocation
basedBengaluru, India