Engineering Manager

Location: Flexible - Remote or Based in India

Type: Equity-Based Partnership with Investment

Vesting Schedule: 4 years with a 1-year cliff

IMPORTANT: This is an equity-only position with investment until the business starts generating revenue.

About Dwichakra:

Dwichakra is the ultimate lifestyle app for motorcycle enthusiasts, providing everything riders need to fuel their passion for the open road. Our platform offers new routes, epic ride planning, and a vibrant community connection, along with an e-commerce shop, achievement tracking, expense management, and roadside assistance. Committed to AI-powered personalized route catalogs and instant support, Dwichakra ensures a thrilling journey for every motorcyclist.

Founded in 2016, Dwichakra is transforming the Indian two-wheeler industry by delivering an integrated ecosystem that caters to every aspect of a rider's journey. We are rapidly positioning ourselves as a pioneer in comprehensive services for motorcycle enthusiasts across India.

Time Commitment:

• Hours: 15-25 hours per week
• Flexibility: Can be managed alongside a full-time job
• Working Hours: Flexible

Compensation:

• Equity Partnership: Join a growing startup as a key partner
• Leadership Opportunity: Shape technology as a Director
• Future Revenue Sharing: As the business scales
• Potential Full-Time Role: As the company grows

Role Overview:

We are seeking a driven and visionary Director Of Technology to join Dwichakra as an integral contributor and investor. This role is perfect for anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations and a robust technical background who is ready to invest in our shared mission.

As a technologist and partner, you will provide technical leadership and expertise in developing and launching innovative technology solutions. Your contributions will be crucial in enhancing our product offerings and scaling the company.

Key Responsibilities:

• Technology Strategy: Collaborate with founders to define and execute a technology roadmap that aligns with the company’s vision and growth strategy.
• Financial Investment: Commit to a financial contribution to support technology development, product launch, and scaling efforts.
• Technical Leadership: Lead the design and implementation of the platform, ensuring scalability, security, and performance.
• Product Development: Direct the development of new features and enhancements, leveraging AI and other technologies for a superior user experience.
• Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and manage a talented technology team to foster innovation and excellence.
• Decision-Making: Participate in strategic and operational decisions to drive the company forward.

Shared Responsibilities:

• Operations Oversight: Collaborate with Founders for smooth daily operations in technology.
• Business Development: Partner with technology vendors, service providers, and stakeholders.
• Industry Representation: Represent Dwichakra at key industry events and technology forums.
• Visionary Leadership: Inspire the technology team to drive innovation and stay ahead of market trends.

Qualifications and Skills:

Essential:

• Proven experience in a senior technology leadership role (CTO or equivalent).
• Strong understanding of software development, AI applications, and mobile app technologies.
• An entrepreneurial mindset with a strategic approach to technology and business goals.
• Willingness and ability to make a financial investment in the company.
• Excellent leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong communication and interpersonal abilities.

Preferred:

• Experience in startups, product development, or technology commercialization.
• Familiarity with the motorcycle or automobile industry and market trends.
• A network of potential clients, investors, or technology partners.

Equity and Investment:

• Equity Offering: Based on contributions (financial, expertise, and operational involvement), equity shares will be negotiated with a vesting schedule.
• Investment Requirement: A minimum financial contribution of INR 15-25 lakhs to support technology development and product launch.

If you are an innovative and entrepreneurial-minded technology leader passionate about the startup community, we invite you to join us in shaping the future of Dwichakra. Apply today and help us create the ultimate experience for motorcycle riders and indian two-wheeler ecosystem!

CTO / Head of Engineering

About our Client

Our client is a B2B2C tech firm backed by India’s largest retailer and tech venture capitalist founded by founders - IITB Graduates who are experienced in retail, ecommerce and fintech

It aims to become one app to manage all your brands loyalty points, cashback and coupons. It will have additional content and discovery layer for customers and brands for further engagement and commerce.

The company currently powers closed-loop loyalty programs for all different brands under its parent retail group. Currently, it has 20Mn+ registered customers and 3Mn MAU across 8 brands. Its vision is to be at the center of D2C Brands and the consumer consumption ecosystem

Role description:
We are looking for a competent CTO (Chief Technology Officer) who will be our first technology go-to expert and play an integral role in setting the company’s strategic direction, development and future growth. In this position, you will oversee our overall technology development and technology utilization plan to manage all information technology resources of our company.

Key Responsibilities

•  CTO will be leading, building, and operating exciting products with a passionate team.
•  We are looking for someone who has developed and deployed software with a strong focus on end-user experience. We are seeking someone with a proven track record of shipping web scalable products.
•  The ideal candidate will have a track record of building and delivering cloud solutions with delightful consumer experiences, combined with ease of implementation/reliability.
•  Experience with massively scalable distributed compute product architectures.
•  Experience with micro services-oriented architectures, Experience with scaling Big Data infrastructure.
•  Experience delivering platform technology and creating an ecosystem of applications and services across multiple verticals and solution offerings
•  Experience successfully scaling technology infrastructure to support rapid customer /data growth.
•  Experience with fast-paced, rapidly-iterating, design-forward, product-focused companies.
•  "Roll-up-your-sleeves" entrepreneurial, start-up attitude, team player with record of leading and mentoring employees

Candidate Experience: Desired skills

•  He/she should have prior work experience of 7-12 years on large-scale mobile app products and can rapidly familiarize yourself with complex products
•  Have inclination to learn and build new age products with blockchain and web3 tech
•  Strong track record of being able to develop and set release plans, track deadlines, deliverables, resource allocations, issues/risks and create mitigation strategies as needed to deliver a quality product on time
•  Strong technical and architecture skills in wide areas of platform engineering with proven ability to dive deep in any area as needed.
•  Extensive experience with eCommerce platforms, cloud systems, payment solutions, digital marketing technology, automation, and multi-device development is required; AWS experience is a strong plus
•  Experience managing Small teams and remote teams is a strong plus
•  Competent in driving a culture of continuous learning to improve technology and remove roadblocks that hold the team back.

Why is this a great opportunity for the right candidate :

•  Experienced founding team
•  Backed by Future Group which gives an edge over working with different D2C and traditional brands ecosystem which is necessary to win in this market
•  Existing app customer base of 20Mn registered and 4-5 Mn MAU + which gives us a head start and starting customer base of FuturePay necessary for pivoting the product to Carrot as described earlier
•  Right to win - The founding team knows the business & its secrets inside out. We are starting with a significant head start and a precise plan of action
•  Barriers to entry - This is a specialized play with natural barriers to entry, allowing for significant value creation for all equity holders
•  Exposure to all aspects of company building - exposure to investors, fund-raising, decision making, building the team & culture
•  All of the above perks of joining a high potential company very early, along with a competitive market salary.

Head/ Chief Architect - Engineering

About Our Client

Our client is headquartered in California and Y Combinator backed Shopify-like platform for creators & knowledge professionals (coaches, instructors, experts, artists etc.) to launch, manage and grow their business online. Founded by IIT/ IIM/ BITS/ Yale/ BCG Alumni and 3X Entrepreneurs, they are well funded and backed by top Indian VC firms along with start-up veterans like Kunal Shah (CRED). The company is founded by alumni from top IITs, IIMs, BITS, Yale including ex-entrepreneurs and from firms such as BCG, Hike, Dunzo and P&G.

Since the launch of  its first version in December 2020 they have grown 25X. Creators have earned more than $1 Million since launch through the platform.
We have just closed our series A (yet to announce) and are looking to build out our leadership team across functions.

About the role:

About the job

• Own and drive product development and engineering management in a fast paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Deliver architectural initiatives that drive revenue and improve efficiency inline with business strategy.
• Develop and maintain a aspirational architectural road map
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of IT industry best practices, technologies, architectures and emerging technologies.
• Build and lead the technical team with focus on infusing culture resulting in energetic & positive outcomes.

Requirements

• Relevant prior experience in a software product-based company in a leadership position. Minimum of 5+ years experience building applications in high level programming languages - Java, Python or Go
• Strong experience in either or all of databases: MySQL, MongoDB, NOSQL, SQL Server, Oracle. -Strong working knowledge on AWS & Google Cloud & Cloud security.
• Strong working knowledge of Web, caching technologies, API integration technologies & protocols.
• Experience with managing AGILE development methodology and inspire the team to follow best Scrum practices.
• Fair understanding of DevOps would be ideal
• Must be a strong and enthusiastic team player with excellent verbal and written communications skills.
• You are a good communicator who can explain technical concepts to product managers, designers, support and other engineers and you have curiosity about how things work
• Skills in Microservices Architecture, Product Roadmap& tech team management

About First Principles

We are a Tech Holding Company and our portfolio companies generate millions in revenue. What is unique about FirstPrinciples is that most of our companies remain controlled and majority owned by First Principles and its team members rather than by external investors. We are proud that our product engineering team builds world class products from India. https://firstprinciples.io/">https://firstprinciples.io/

About this Role

As we scale and build our organisation, we would like to add an individual to our core Technical Leadership who can scale our key products and projects and help us build and foster relationships with Enterprise clients.

We are looking for an experienced Technology Leader to join our fast growing organisation to help us with driving Technical Strategy, Approach and oversee the Implementation for internal and external products. You should be someone who loves Engineering, have amazing debugging skills and slay problems with technology. 

In this role, you will undertake Technical / Solution Architecture and should also be able to help team with Engineering and coding wherever required. That includes, working along with the team, writing code, doing R&D or POCs, ensuring we follow modern industry standards and building beautiful high performing Software and Applications and thus delivering a better solution and product. You will also help FP build strong relationships with clients and technical leadership on the client side.

You would be required to have a minimum of 10+ years of experience with a mix of Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure, Cyber - Network Security, Enterprise Application Maintenance, Database Management along with Project, Client and People Management skills which are necessary to lead the team and be their voice. You should be a leader and not just a manager who loves delegating things to the off-shore team, but rather someone who would not hesitate to take over Git-Pull and start writing code and show ‘here is how it’s done’ and amaze everyone with your expertise! :-) 

Because this is a Senior role, you would also be involved working with the Product/Project Manager and will be responsible for the delivery and output.

Tech Stack [High-Level]: We are JavaScript focused i.e. we work in ReactJS, NodeJS, AngularJS, TypeForm, TypeScript, Redis. On the server side, we work with AWS/GCP/DO. Database: MySQL, PostgreS and MongoDb. API: REST and GraphQL API. We also have a strong DevOps stack - including Kubernetes(K8), Dockers and CI/CD automation. 

Interview Process: 

• 60 min Discovery Call
• 15 mins introduction and what you bring to the table (We love people who say, “We build the damn table”) 
• 15 min understanding your experience and background
• 15 min on why you want to join our team and your expectations, future plans
• 15 min Q&A
  
  
• 60-90 min Technical Interview  (May be more than 1)
• Technical Call
  
  
• 45-60 min Final Call
• 15 min discussion on results 
• 15 min CTC expectations / negotiations 
• 15 min closure
• 15 min buffer

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features spanning across systems in a manner that satisfies requirements of performance, scale, security and robustness
• Contribute to improvement of technology and execution processes in the company
• Collaborate in setting technology standards with technology leaders across the company
• Serve as a knowledge center on current and emerging technologies, and help train others when required
• Foster a strong technical culture by mentoring other engineers
• Keep up to date with the latest technologies, evaluate new tools

Relevant Experience and Qualifications 

• Demonstrated expertise in system-level design of large scale distributed systems on the Java stack, and experience with web services and service oriented architectures
• Solid experience with Spring (Core/Boot/Security/MVC/Data)
• Have 8 - 12  years of professional experience in software development.
• Extensive experience with modern open source systems including relational / non relational data stores and bigdata processing
• Experience with AWS stack, at least the common datastores and services 
• Experience with containerization technologies and concepts including Docker
• Basic knowledge about security concepts and secure coding
• Excellent analytical, conceptual and communication skills in spoken and written English.
• Experience leading projects developed across continents.

Great to have Experience and Qualifications 

• Knowledge of machine learning concepts, and some hands-on experience implementing machine learnt models
• Experience with infrastructure design for cloud based apps, especially AWS.
• Past experience with information and data security standards (PCI-DSS, ISO27000) very nice to have.