Free performance review template
An employee performance review with a ratings table, key achievements, areas to develop, goals for the next period and a sign-off section. Use it for annual or mid-year reviews between a manager and an employee.
What's in this template
Annual Performance Review
| Employee | Karan Malhotra |
| Job title | Senior Software Engineer |
| Department | Payments Platform, Engineering |
| Company | FinBridge Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Gurugram |
| Manager | Sneha Agarwal, Engineering Manager |
| Review period | 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 |
| Review date | 22 April 2026 |
Rating scale
1 = Below expectations, 2 = Partly meets expectations, 3 = Meets expectations, 4 = Exceeds expectations, 5 = Outstanding
Performance ratings
| Area | Rating | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of work | 4 | Code is well tested and reviewed; very few production defects traced to Karan's changes |
| Delivery and ownership | 5 | Led the UPI AutoPay launch end to end and delivered two weeks early |
| Technical skill | 4 | Strong in Java and Kafka; growing in system design for high-volume services |
| Collaboration | 4 | Works well with product and risk teams; respected in design reviews |
| Communication | 3 | Clear in writing; can be more concise and proactive in status updates to leadership |
| Mentoring and leadership | 4 | Mentored two junior engineers, both now working independently |
| Overall | 4 | Exceeds expectations |
Goals from last year
| Goal | Result |
|---|---|
| Launch UPI AutoPay for subscription merchants by Q2 | Achieved: launched 14 June 2025, now 1,200 merchants |
| Reduce payment API p99 latency below 300 ms | Achieved: down from 420 ms to 260 ms |
| Mentor at least one junior engineer | Exceeded: mentored two |
| Complete AWS Solutions Architect certification | Not achieved: deferred to this year due to launch workload |
Key achievements
- UPI AutoPay launch: designed the mandate service and retry logic now processing 3.8 lakh recurring payments a month with a 98.6% success rate.
- Latency improvement: introduced connection pooling and caching on the payment status API, cutting p99 latency by 38% and reducing infrastructure cost by ₹4.2 lakh a year.
- Incident leadership: led the response to the November 2025 bank gateway outage, restoring service in 42 minutes and writing a clear post-incident review adopted as the team's template.
- Mentoring: coached Divya and Rohan through their first on-call rotations and code ownership of two services.
Areas to develop
- Executive communication: share progress and risks earlier and in fewer words. Weekly written updates to the head of engineering would help.
- Broader system design: take on cross-team design work beyond the payments platform to prepare for a staff engineer role.
- Delegation: let mentees own more of the hard problems rather than stepping in to fix them.
Goals for 2026–27
- Lead the design and rollout of the new reconciliation service by Q3, reducing manual reconciliation effort by 70%.
- Present two design reviews to the architecture council.
- Complete the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification by September 2026.
- Send a short weekly update to the head of engineering on Payments Platform priorities and risks.
Employee comments
I am proud of the AutoPay launch and grateful for the trust to lead it. I agree that my updates to leadership can be shorter and earlier, and I would like support to take on cross-team design work this year. I also request time in Q2 to prepare for the AWS certification.
Manager summary
Karan had an excellent year and is one of the strongest engineers on the platform team. With continued growth in communication and wider system design, he is on track for promotion to Staff Engineer in the next review cycle. Recommended rating: Exceeds expectations, with a merit increase as per the 2026 compensation guidelines.
Sign-off
Employee: Karan Malhotra ____________________ Date: ____________
Manager: Sneha Agarwal ____________________ Date: ____________
HR Business Partner: Pooja Bansal ____________________ Date: ____________