Director of Engineering

This role is with a client of Gyaani AI. The client will be introduced during the interview process.

The role

We are hiring a Director of Engineering to lead and grow our engineering function in India. You will own how we build and ship — the engineering process, the quality bar, delivery, and the team itself. This is a working director role: you lead the function and set standards, and you stay hands-on in architecture and code. You will partner closely with architecture and program management to ensure that execution is well managed.

What you'll own

• Engineering function & process. Define and enforce the SDLC across the org: branching strategy, code review, release cadence, testing standards, and the overall quality bar.
• Technical direction. Set and drive technical direction for service engineering.
• Team leadership & growth. Line-manage engineers and grow the team over time. You will bring best practices to the team, own hiring and mentoring, and scale the function as the company grows.
• Delivery. Run day-to-day delivery, set priorities, and unblock the team.
• Hands-on contribution. Stay in the code where it counts — design, build, and review design-critical work.
• Tooling & automation. Stand up and steward Git workflows, CI/CD, and automated testing as we move away from manual processes.
• Culture & mentorship. Grow engineers' skills and build a culture of ownership and a consistent standard across the team.
• AI-enabled engineering. Champion AI-assisted development across the team and put the guardrails in place for safe, responsible use — standards for reviewing AI-generated code, data handling, IP and security boundaries, and clear guidance on where AI belongs in the workflow.

What you bring

Required

• 12+ years building production software, including several years leading engineering teams (managing engineers and/or other leads).
• A genuine technologist: strong fundamentals, sound judgment across languages and stacks, and the ability to ramp quickly on whatever the problem needs.
• A track record of building or scaling an engineering team and function — hiring, onboarding, and raising the bar.
• A working-director / player-coach operator — you lead and still ship.
• Deep command of modern SDLC practice: Git, code review, CI/CD, automated testing, release management.
• A history of introducing or strengthening engineering process in environments that lacked it.
• Strong written and verbal English; comfortable working across time zones with a distributed team.

A plus (not required)

• Experience in the CCM / document-composition industry.
• Exposure to regulated, high-accuracy, or high-volume workflows.

Ways of working

Our customers sit across several time zones, and so does the team. We lean async-first and protect a daily overlap window so reviews, decisions, and unblocks happen without anyone living in their inbox. If you enjoy leading a distributed team, communicating clearly in writing, and shaping your day around the customers you serve, you'll be at home here.

Interview process

We run a focused, technical process — expect to write and reason about real code, and to talk about how you build teams.

1. Introductory call — your background, what you're looking for, and mutual fit.
2. Technical deep-dive — engineering craft and how you'd bring structured SDLC into an ad-hoc environment.
3. Hands-on technical round — a practical build-and-debug exercise. We watch how you approach the problem, not just the result.
4. Leadership & team-building round — how you build, hire, grow, and mentor an engineering function; managing as a working director.
5. Final conversation with the Hiring Manager.

On AI-enabled tools. We build with modern AI-assisted tooling and we expect the same in our interviews. You are encouraged to use AI coding assistants (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, and the like) throughout the technical rounds. We are interested in how you frame problems, direct the tools, and judge their output — being an effective technologist today includes using these tools well.

Location & travel

Our office is in Chandigarh, and being nearby is a plus — but for the right person we'll accommodate a remote setup elsewhere in India. Expect to travel to the office roughly twice a quarter for in-person planning and team time.

• We are building a deliberately small, high-leverage team. We hire for quality over volume.