The Role

This is not an IT support, infrastructure or conventional digital-transformation role.

We are looking for a hands-on engineering leader who can take a business or product objective, determine how it should technically be built, organise the engineering team around it and take responsibility for getting reliable software into production.

The Head of Engineering will work closely with the Product Manager and business leadership.

The Product Manager will primarily own what should be built and why.

The Head of Engineering will primarily own how it is built, who builds it and whether the engineering organisation can deliver it reliably and quickly.

The person should be technically strong enough to review architecture and code, challenge poor technical decisions, solve difficult problems with the team and build the engineering function rather than simply coordinate developers.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership

- Own the engineering organisation and technical delivery across our internal software products.
- Hire, structure, mentor and manage developers and other technical resources.
- Allocate engineering resources against product priorities.
- Establish a high-output engineering culture centred around ownership, speed, judgment and production reliability.
- Identify skill gaps and determine when capabilities should be hired internally, contracted or sourced externally.
- Hold engineers accountable for delivery quality and timelines.

Architecture & Technical Ownership
- Own the architecture of interconnected applications, services, databases and integrations.
- Make technical decisions across frontend, backend, databases, APIs, authentication, permissions, integrations and deployment.
- Ensure systems remain maintainable and scalable as adoption increases.
- Manage technical debt deliberately without slowing down product velocity unnecessarily.
- Review architecture and significant code changes rather than operating purely at a management level.
- Establish sensible engineering standards without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.

Product Engineering & Execution
- Work closely with Product Management to convert product requirements into executable engineering plans.
- Break complex product requirements into sensible technical workstreams.
- Estimate technical complexity and identify architectural dependencies early.
- Take features from specification through development, testing, deployment and production monitoring.
- Improve the speed from business requirement to usable production software.
- Ensure teams do not remain blocked waiting for perfect specifications where reasonable engineering judgment can move the work forward.

AI-Native Development We use modern AI tools heavily across the development lifecycle and expect the engineering organisation to operate accordingly.

The Head of Engineering should:

- Be highly comfortable with AI-assisted software development.
- Establish effective use of AI for development, debugging, prototyping, testing, documentation and code review.
- Understand where AI meaningfully accelerates engineering and where human review remains critical.
- Evaluate new AI models, coding tools, agents, frameworks and development workflows.




- Help individual engineers materially increase their output through better tooling and working methods.
- Lead development of AI and agent-based functionality where appropriate.

Quality & Production Reliability
- Own engineering quality before software reaches users.
- Establish appropriate code review, testing, regression and deployment practices.
- Ensure production systems have adequate monitoring, logging, rollback and recovery mechanisms.
- Protect data integrity and system reliability.
- Ensure critical technical issues are diagnosed and resolved quickly.
- Work closely with testing/quality resources while maintaining ultimate engineering accountability for what reaches production.

Systems & Integrations Our software environment includes interconnected workflows across multiple business functions rather than isolated applications.

The Head should be comfortable designing and maintaining integrations involving:

- APIs
- databases
- ERP systems
- Tally/accounting systems
- email and communication systems
- workflow engines
- role-based access and permissions
- AI models and agents
- MCPs and external tools
- third-party SaaS platforms
- internal applications

They should be capable of understanding the entire system rather than thinking only within one application or module.

Build vs Buy Decisions

- Evaluate open-source software, SaaS products, APIs, third-party vendors and internal development alternatives.
- Decide when something should be built internally versus integrated or purchased.
- Assess technical vendors based on actual capability and architecture rather than marketing claims.
- Avoid unnecessary rebuilding where existing tools can solve the problem effectively.
- Avoid unnecessary vendor dependence where internal capability provides a strategic advantage.

What This Role Is NOT Recruiters should be explicitly told not to source conventional IT Heads for this requirement.

This role does not primarily own:

- laptops and desktops
- printers
- Wi-Fi or office networking support
- employee helpdesk
- routine Google Workspace administration
- desktop software installation
- basic server administration
- user training
- general IT procurement
- routine ERP user support

Those functions may interact with Engineering but are not the reason this position exists. Likewise, this is not primarily a project management or requirements-coordination position. The candidate needs genuine engineering depth.

Candidate Profile

We are more interested in demonstrated capability than a fixed number of years of experience.

Strong candidates will usually have several of the following:

- Built and shipped substantial software products used by real users.
- Led a small or medium engineering team.
- Strong hands-on software engineering background.
- Ability to review production code and architecture.




- Experience across backend, frontend, databases and APIs.
- Experience designing interconnected systems and integrations.
- Production ownership after launch, not merely project delivery.
- Experience hiring or building engineering teams.
- Strong technical judgment around architecture and trade-offs.
- Experience operating in fast-moving product environments.
- Strong understanding of modern AI-assisted development.
- Experience with LLMs, AI agents or AI-enabled applications is strongly preferred.
- Startup, SaaS, product-company or founder/early-engineering experience is highly relevant.

We are not specifically looking for candidates whose primary background is traditional corporate IT infrastructure or IT support.

Indicative Technology Environment

Candidates do not need to match every technology exactly, but should be able to learn unfamiliar systems quickly.

Our environment may include

- TypeScript / JavaScript
- React / Next.js
- Node.js
- Python
- PostgreSQL and other databases
- APIs and system integrations
- workflow automation
- LLM integrations
- AI agents
- MCP-based integrations
- cloud and on-premise infrastructure

The technology stack will continue to evolve, so engineering judgment matters more than familiarity with one specific framework.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first few months, the Head of Engineering should progressively become the primary technical owner of the software organisation.

Success means

- Developers have clear technical leadership.
- Product requirements are converted into engineering execution without excessive dependence on senior management.
- Engineering delivery becomes faster and more predictable.
- Architecture decisions have clear ownership.
- Production quality improves.
- Technical problems are resolved within the engineering organisation rather than repeatedly escalating upward.
- The company can expand its software products without engineering becoming a bottleneck.

The objective is that business leadership can communicate what outcome the company needs, Product can define the product requirement, and Engineering can independently determine how to build and deliver it.

Recruiter Screening Instructions

Please do not shortlist candidates based only on title, years of experience or team size.

Before sending a candidate to us, establish:

1. What software products or systems have they personally helped build and ship?
2. What did they technically own?
3. How large was the engineering team they directly managed?
4. Can they still meaningfully review code and architecture?
5. What is the most difficult production problem they personally helped solve?
6. What architectural decisions have they personally made?
7. Have they hired engineers themselves?
8. What AI coding/development tools are they currently using?
9. Have they built anything using LLMs, agents or AI integrations?
10. What happened to the systems they built after they went into production?

Candidates who have primarily managed IT operations, infrastructure/helpdesk teams, vendor coordination or large outsourced implementation projects should not be treated as a match merely because they have held a senior technology title.

📌 head of engineering and product (Mumbai)
🏢 Siddharth Carbochem Products
📍 Mumbai