Chief Technology Officer

Celeco Labs is hiring a hands-on Head of Engineering on behalf of a confidential client in the housing-finance sector.

This is a role for an engineer who wants to own delivery, not only manage it. You will set the technical direction, build and maintain production systems, and work closely with the business team. You should be comfortable taking a requirement from the first discussion through technical planning, implementation, release, and production support.

What you will do

• Own the engineering roadmap and help decide what should be built first.

• Design, build, and maintain reliable customer-facing products and internal systems.

• Write production code and review code written by others.

• Turn business requirements into clear technical plans and releases.

• Choose practical architecture, tools, and vendors that fit the company's needs.

• Set working standards for testing, deployment, monitoring, backups, and access control.

• Protect customer and company data through practical security controls.

• Investigate production issues and make sure the same problems do not repeat.

• Help hire and guide a small engineering team as the company grows.

What we are looking for

• 3–5 years of professional software-engineering experience.

• Experience building and running production systems.

• Strong backend skills, including APIs, databases, and cloud services.

• Enough frontend knowledge to work across a product when needed.

• Good judgment about system design, security, reliability, and cost.

• The ability to explain technical choices in simple language.

• Comfort working independently and taking full ownership of delivery.

Experience in lending, housing finance, fintech, or another regulated industry is useful, but not required. Experience leading engineers or working directly with founders and business leaders is also useful.

How to apply

Please share your CV or LinkedIn profile and two short examples of production systems you have owned. This is a confidential search. More information about the company will be shared with shortlisted candidates during the interview process.

About the role

You will be a pivotal member of the leadership team, responsible for driving the company's product and platform strategy while overseeing engineering excellence across AI, data, platform, DevOps and infrastructure. This is a mission-critical role for an engineering leader who is both strategic and hands-on, and who can build scalable technologies for global enterprise clients in a fast-paced innovation ecosystem.

Reports to: CEO · Location: Bengaluru, India — hybrid, 3 days a week in office

What you will do

Technology & product leadership

• Define and drive the technology vision, architecture and long-term platform roadmap.
• Oversee the architecture, design and delivery of highly scalable enterprise systems.
• Ensure engineering excellence, velocity and reliability across the product lifecycle.

Engineering & platform management

• Lead platform engineering, product technology, DevOps, infrastructure and Quality Engineering.
• Build robust cloud-native systems using the Azure, AWS and GCP ecosystems.
• Oversee operational effectiveness, including uptime, production reliability and cost optimisation.

Innovation & AI strategy

• Spearhead Mission AI by developing scalable, production-grade AI/ML and GenAI capabilities.
• Own the GenAI/LLM solutions architecture.
• Core specialisation in AI agents and autonomous workflows, data extraction and intelligent automation.
• Direct hands-on architectural oversight of large language models, applied AI and multi-layered deep learning products.
• Extensive expertise in building intelligent document automation systems — similar in complexity to patent parsing, legal workflow automation and structured decision intelligence tools.

Technical leadership

• A proven track record overseeing product architecture, tech strategy and cross-functional engineering execution across core full-stack and AI platforms.
• Collaborate with executive leadership on business strategy, client requirements and product delivery.
• Build, mentor and scale high-performing engineering teams with a growth mindset.
• Establish a strong technology culture grounded in ownership, innovation and continuous learning.

What success looks like

• Mission AI: build a world-class AI system leveraging GenAI, ML and enterprise-grade data engineering.
• Hyper-scaling: architect and scale the platform to match global industry leaders in the IP space.
• Culture building: develop a strong engineering organisation with high ownership, performance and innovation DNA.

Qualifications & experience

• Preferably under 15 years of enterprise software engineering experience across B2B SaaS or technology-first companies; fewer is fine for an exceptional engineer.
• A proven track record of taking early-stage AI/ML prototypes and scaling them into robust enterprise SaaS platforms featuring multi-agent orchestration, complex workflows and decision intelligence.
• Experienced in building and mentoring agile, lean startup teams of full-stack and machine learning engineers from the ground up.
• Proven leadership in defining and executing technology strategy and platform roadmaps.
• Extensive cloud-native engineering experience with Azure, AWS and GCP.

Technical expertise

• Strong full-stack engineering background (Java, Python, JavaScript frameworks).
• Expertise with JS frameworks such as React, Angular and Node.js.
• Experience building and scaling distributed systems and microservices.
• Strong knowledge of databases (SQL, NoSQL), data modelling and unstructured data management.
• Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and tools (Atlassian, Git, CI/CD pipelines).

Behavioural & leadership competencies

• Product and delivery management expertise, end to end, including delivery and customer support.
• Excellent communication, with the ability to influence executive stakeholders.
• High technical proficiency combined with strong business acumen.
• Strong analytical and decision-making skills.

About the role

We are hiring a Principal Engineer to own the hardest technical problems in our product and see them through from first sketch to stable production. You will set technical direction, design systems that scale, and raise the engineering bar through your own work and the people around you. This is a hands-on leadership role: you write code, review designs, and ship.

What will you do?

You will own outcomes, not just tasks. Expect to spend your time on the following.

• Own projects end to end. Take an ambiguous problem, shape the requirements, design the solution, break down the work, deliver it to production, and stay accountable for how it runs afterwards.

• Lead system design. Author and review architecture for services, data pipelines and integrations, with clear trade-offs on scale, latency, cost, consistency and reliability.

• Write and review critical code. Build the hardest components yourself, and set standards for code quality, testing and maintainability through code and design reviews.

• Own deployment and operations. Design CI/CD, infrastructure and release strategies. Drive observability, on-call readiness, incident response and post-incident learning.

• Solve hard problems. Debug production issues across the stack, and find root causes in performance, concurrency, data and scaling problems.

• Mentor and multiply. Coach senior and junior engineers, grow future tech leads, and make the whole team faster and more confident.

• Partner across functions. Work with product, design, data and business teams to turn goals into technical plans, and to say no or reshape scope when needed.

• Shape technical strategy. Guide build-versus-buy decisions, manage tech debt, evaluate new technologies, and contribute to the engineering roadmap.

• Raise the bar. Help define engineering practices, hiring standards and culture, and take part in interviewing.

What are we looking for?

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Core engineering

• 10+ years of professional software engineering, with a track record of shipping and running production systems.

• Strong computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms and complexity, operating systems, networking, databases and concurrency.

• Fluency in at least one major backend language (for example Python, Go, Java, or Node.js/ TypeScript) and the ability to pick up others quickly.

• Deep knowledge of relational and NoSQL data stores: schema design, indexing, transactions, query tuning and replication.

System design and problem solving

• Proven ability to design distributed systems that are scalable, fault tolerant and cost aware, and to explain the trade-offs clearly.

• Experience with APIs, event-driven and asynchronous architectures, queues, caching and service-to-service communication.

• A structured approach to ambiguous problems: break them down, test assumptions, decide with incomplete data, and measure results.

• Strong debugging instincts, including performance profiling and production troubleshooting.

Delivery and operations

• Have led at least two significant projects from inception to production, including planning, milestones, risk management and launch.

• Hands-on experience with deployment: CI/CD pipelines, containers (Docker, Kubernetes), a major cloud (AWS, GCP or Azure), and infrastructure as code.

• Practical experience with monitoring, logging, alerting, SLOs and incident management.

• Habit of writing tests and automation, and of leaving systems more reliable than you found them.

Leadership and communication

• Experience leading engineers without formal authority, through influence, mentoring and clear technical writing.

• Excellent written and verbal communication: design docs, RFCs and concise updates to non-technical stakeholders.

• Ownership mindset, sound judgment on priorities, and comfort working in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to have

• Experience in fintech, lending or another regulated, data-heavy domain.

• Exposure to AI/ML or LLM-based systems in production: model serving, evaluation, retrieval, and cost and latency management.

• Deep experience with data engineering: streaming, batch pipelines, warehouses or search systems.

• Security and compliance awareness: authentication, encryption, audit trails, secure SDLC.

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS, high-throughput systems or zero downtime migrations.

• Open-source contributions, conference talks, or technical writing.

• Experience scaling an engineering team or helping set up hiring and onboarding practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage the software development function, including developers, technical leads, architects, and QA engineers.
• Define and execute the software development roadmap in alignment with the company's business strategy and growth objectives.
• Oversee the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of scalable, secure, and high-performance software applications.
• Lead the development and enhancement of fintech platforms, financial applications, payment solutions, and digital financial products, as applicable.
• Drive API development, third-party integrations, banking integrations, payment gateway integrations, and other financial technology integrations.
• Establish software architecture standards, coding practices, development methodologies, and engineering best practices.
• Ensure application security, data protection, system reliability, scalability, and performance across software platforms.
• Drive the adoption of modern technologies, cloud-based solutions, DevOps practices, automation, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Oversee software development life cycles, sprint planning, release management, quality assurance, and production support.
• Establish engineering KPIs, monitor team performance, and ensure timely delivery of high-quality software solutions.
• Collaborate with Product, Business, Compliance, Information Security, and Operations teams to translate business requirements into effective technology solutions.
• Ensure software development processes adhere to applicable regulatory requirements, security standards, internal policies, and IT governance practices.
• Manage technology budgets, external development partners, software vendors, and resource allocation.
• Mentor and develop engineering leaders, build a high-performing technology team, and foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Identify opportunities for process optimization, technical debt reduction, and improvement in software delivery efficiency.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 15–20+ years of experience in software development, engineering, and technology delivery, with approximately 20 years preferred.
• Significant experience in leading software development teams and managing large-scale application development initiatives.
• Strong expertise in software architecture, system design, API development, databases, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Experience with modern programming languages, frameworks, cloud platforms, DevOps, CI/CD, and software engineering tools.
• Proven experience in developing scalable, secure, and high-availability applications.
• Experience in fintech, banking, payments, digital lending, financial services, or related technology domains is preferred.
• Understanding of financial data security, application security, regulatory compliance, and secure software development practices.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, engineering teams, delivery timelines, and technology priorities.
• Excellent leadership, strategic planning, analytical, stakeholder management, and communication skills.

Work Location: In person

About the Company

As the world moves toward AI-native applications, one element matters more than anything: data.

We are building a platform that helps organizations unlock the value hidden within customer feedback. By centralizing data from multiple sources—including CRM platforms, support systems, collaboration tools, surveys, community forums, and customer conversations—into a unified intelligence layer, we enable teams to understand customer needs and make better product decisions.

Built on top of this foundation is an AI-powered platform that allows teams to query, monitor, and act on customer intelligence directly within their workflows. Our customers include some of the fastest-growing product-led technology companies as well as large global enterprises.

Backed by leading global venture capital firms, our engineering culture is AI-native from the ground up. Agents, LLMs, and applied machine learning are not side projects—they are central to how we build products. We operate at the cutting edge of agentic systems and continuously push the boundaries of what modern AI applications can achieve.

What You Will Do

• Convert product direction into phased technical plans, including estimates, milestones, dependencies, and risk assessments.
• Make thoughtful trade-offs across correctness, latency, user experience, AI/model behavior, reliability, cost, and delivery speed.
• Define clear ownership boundaries across frontend applications, BFF layers, backend services, agent workflows, ML platforms, and data contracts.
• Review ERDs, PRDs, design documents, and implementation plans to identify gaps before they become execution challenges.
• Drive planning and execution for complex initiatives while empowering area leads and senior engineers to maintain ownership.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Engineering, and GTM teams to turn ambiguous problem statements into executable solutions.
• Influence technical direction through strong engineering judgment, architectural leadership, and hands-on involvement.
• Mentor senior engineers and contribute to engineering excellence through reviews, incident analysis, and proactive risk management.

What It Takes

• 9+ years of experience as a Senior Engineer, Technical Lead, or equivalent role.
• Demonstrated experience owning architecture and execution for large-scale product or platform initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Strong foundation in distributed systems and modern software architecture.
• Exposure to agentic AI systems, machine learning engineering, MLOps platforms, and frontend/BFF architectures.
• Ability to own end-to-end product and technical problems rather than specializing exclusively in a single layer of the stack.
• Proven track record of converting ambiguity into actionable engineering plans.
• Excellent written communication skills, including design documentation, architectural reviews, trade-off analyses, and RCA documentation.
• Ability to challenge requirements constructively and collaborate effectively across Product, Design, Engineering, and GTM functions.
• High ownership mindset, attention to detail, and a low-ego, collaborative approach.