Senior Lead - Application Development (AePS, IMPS & NETC)

NPCI is evolving the National Electronic Toll Collection
(NETC) FASTag ecosystem into a next-generation, real-time, intelligent, and
scalable national tolling and mobility platform.

This role is responsible for architecting, building, and
scaling stream‑processing and platform capabilities that operate at national
scale across toll plazas, acquirer and issuer banks, and concessionaires —
handling mission-critical financial transactions and meeting stringent
regulatory, audit, and resilience standards mandated by NPCI, NHAI/IHMCL, and
RBI.

The role combines: Low-latency Java-based stream processing
for toll transactions Production-grade distributed systems for tag, vehicle,
and transaction processing Fraud, image (ANPR/VRN), and decision intelligence
(rules-driven, with AI/ML as an added advantage) Platform-level engineering
excellence.

This is a strategic engineering role (not a pure research or
support role). Strategic Outcomes Expected - The individual will directly
contribute to: Increased straight-through processing (STP) for FASTag toll
transactions Reduced manual intervention, charge-back disputes, and exception
handling Early and accurate identification of tag cloning, blacklisted tags,
VRN/TID mismatches, and fraud rings Improved transaction turnaround time (TAT),
settlement accuracy, and system throughput at peak plaza volumes Long-term IP
ownership of core platform capabilities within NPCI for the NETC ecosystem

Key Responsibilities

1. Real-Time Stream Processing Architecture (Java-Centric)
Design and implement event-driven, stream-processing pipelines for NETC FASTag
transaction, mapper, and settlement workflows Build low-latency,
high-throughput systems using Java-based streaming frameworks such as Apache
Kafka / Kafka Streams, Apache Flink, or Spark Structured Streaming Ensure
exactly-once processing, idempotency, and fault tolerance across
acquirer–NPCI–issuer hops Handle large-scale streams of toll read events, ANPR
images, tag metadata, and clearing/settlement files with predictable latency

2. Decision Intelligence & Exception Handling Design and
build rules-driven and data-driven decisioning components for: ANPR / Vehicle
Registration Number (VRN) validation against tag-vehicle mapping Tag class /
vehicle class mismatch detection Fraud and anomaly detection (tag cloning,
duplicate reads, ghost transactions, plaza-level anomalies) Intelligent
exception and dispute prioritization for charge-back (CCH) and dispute
management workflows Collaborate with data science / analytics teams to operationalize
models where applicable, ensuring smooth integration into the streaming
platform

3. Adoption of Emerging Technology Trends (Applied, Not
Experimental) Hybrid decisioning (Rules + Analytics + optional ML/GenAI) for
transparent toll decisioning and dispute adjudication Explainability and
traceability to support charge-back resolution, member bank queries, and
regulatory audits Adaptive rule engines that evolve with new fraud patterns,
plaza layouts, and vehicle classes Lightweight Generative AI use cases
(exploratory) — assisted dispute summaries, root-cause explanations, smart
analyst support Governance frameworks for ethical, compliant usage of any
automation aligned with NPCI and RBI expectations Emphasis is on controlled,
auditable, deterministic systems — critical given the multi-party
(acquirer/issuer/concessionaire) settlement nature of NETC.

4. Platform Integration & Reliability Engineering
Integrate streaming and decisioning components into NETC core switching,
mapper, clearing, and settlement systems Design for high availability,
resilience, and disaster recovery across active-active data centres Optimize
performance under peak national toll volumes (festival/holiday surges, 24×7
plaza operations) Ensure observability (metrics, logs, traces) for NPCI ops,
member banks, and plaza operators

5. Security, Compliance & Audit Readiness Ensure
solutions comply with RBI, NHAI / IHMCL, MoRTH regulatory expectations and NPCI
security and data governance standards Build explainability, traceability, and
audit hooks into automated transaction and fraud decisions Support internal,
external, and regulator audits with clear technical documentation and decision
trails

6. Technical Leadership & IP Ownership Act as a
technical authority for stream processing and platform engineering within the
NETC FASTag platform Mentor junior engineers and drive engineering best
practices across the NETC pod Evaluate and govern vendor / OEM solutions (ANPR
engines, fraud tools) without creating dependency Ensure core architecture and
platform knowledge remains within NPCI.

Required Qualifications & Experience

10–15+ years of experience in enterprise-grade,
mission-critical system development Proven track record of architecting and
delivering high-volume, low-latency, distributed systems in payments,
switching, banking, or tolling/mobility domains.

Demonstrated experience leading platform-level engineering
initiatives end-to-end (design → production → scale).

Required Technical Skills Programming & Frameworks