Head of Product Development

Ailaysa Technologies Pvt Ltd is an AI-powered multilingual content creation and translation platform headquartered in Chennai. Our enterprise group clients include Fortune 500 companies, and we serve publishers, enterprises, and government institutions across India, the US, EU and Asia.

Our product portfolio includes Ailaysa SaaS (AI content & translation workflows), and Chai Reader (AI-powered book discovery and eCommerce). We are at a high-growth inflection point and are building the engineering leadership team to match our ambitions.

We are looking for a technically credible, delivery-obsessed Engineering Leader who can own the end-to-end development and release of our SaaS products. This is not a hands-on coding role it is a people multiplication and product delivery role. You will lead a cross-functional team spanning Backend, Frontend/UI, AI/ML, QA/Testing, and Cloud/DevOps, and you will be accountable for shipping quality products on time, every time.

The ideal candidate is someone who was once a strong engineer but has grown past it.

Own the end-to-end delivery of all AI SaaS product releases from technical planning to production deployment

Translate product roadmaps and business priorities into engineering milestones with clear timelines

Identify cross-team dependencies, surface blockers early, and resolve them before they become delays

Make intelligent scope trade-off decisions: what ships, what gets deferred, and what becomes technical debt

Maintain release cadence discipline across multiple parallel workstreams

Lead and manage a team of 815 engineers across Backend, Frontend/UI, AI/ML, QA/Testing, and Cloud/DevOps

Create high-trust, high-accountability team culture where engineers surface problems early and own their outcomes

Run effective sprint planning, retrospectives, and 1:1s that improve team performance over time

Mentor and develop engineers at all levels grow junior members while retaining and challenging senior ones

Make or support hiring decisions; contribute to building the engineering org as Ailaysa scales

Review architecture decisions, technical designs, and infrastructure proposals challenge risks, not just accept them

Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality, security, documentation, and testing coverage

Oversee cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices to ensure reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency

Ensure AI/ML components are integrated responsibly, with clear performance benchmarks and fallback mechanisms

Own the incident response process and post-mortems for production issues

Serve as the primary interface between engineering and business/product leadership

Translate technical complexity into business language without distortion in both directions

Report on sprint velocity, delivery risk, and engineering health to the CEO and leadership team

Collaborate closely with product and business leads across divisions on technical delivery priorities

Must-Have Experience

610 years in software engineering with at least 2 years in a team lead or engineering head role

Proven track record of shipping SaaS products on time with a cross-functional team

Experience leading teams that include Backend, Frontend, QA, and DevOps disciplines

Hands-on background in Python/Django

Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

Experience with Agile/Scrum delivery methodology

Strong Advantage

Experience leading AI/ML engineering teams or integrating LLM-based features into SaaS products

Familiarity with multilingual content platforms, NLP, or translation technology

Experience in AI, publishing technology, edtech SaaS, or content platform engineering is a PLUS

Prior work with multi-tenant SaaS architecture and enterprise-grade security/compliance (GDPR, EU AI Act)

Startup or scale-up experience where you built processes from the ground up

This role requires a leader who combines technical judgment, delivery discipline, and the ability to scale team performance. Before applying, candidates should reflect on the following competencies:

Technical Credibility

You are comfortable engaging in architectural discussions, reviewing engineering estimates, and evaluating technical trade-offs. You understand what production-ready means across backend, frontend, AI/ML, infrastructure, and QA.

Delivery Discipline

You are highly execution-focused. You proactively track dependencies, anticipate risks, and make pragmatic scope decisions to ensure consistent, on-time product releases.

Team Multiplication

You elevate the performance of the team through clear ownership, high accountability, and a culture where issues surface early. You actively mentor engineers and address performance issues directly when required.

Stakeholder Communication

You communicate effectively across technical and business teams. You can translate engineering complexity into clear business implications and provide leadership with transparent updates on delivery progress and risks.

Startup Execution Mindset

You are comfortable building processes in a fast-moving environment. You move quickly, make pragmatic decisions, and treat constraints as problems to solve rather than blockers.

To avoid misalignment, this role is not suited for the following profiles:

• A project manager with a technical title. This role requires real engineering depth and accountability for product delivery.
• A senior developer primarily focused on coding. The core responsibility is leading people and driving execution, not individual development work.
• A strategist without execution discipline. Vision must be matched with the ability to manage delivery in detail.
• A leader who avoids difficult conversations. Addressing delivery risks, missed commitments, and performance issues directly is part of the role.

What We Offer

The Role

Direct reporting line to the Founder & CEO

Full ownership of engineering delivery across an AI-first product portfolio

Opportunity to build the engineering org from an early stage

Exposure to AI, and language technology markets

Work with enterprise and government clients

The Environment

Competitive compensation benchmarked to market (details on discussion)

Fast-growth startup with global offices in US and EU.

A founder with 25+ years in language technology who invests in the team, and leader in AI, as Ailaysa was started 3 years before ChatGPT released!

Send your CV and a short note (not more than 200 words) on the most complex multi-disciplinary engineering team you have led and what you learned from it to:

hr@ailaysa.com | Subject: Head of Product Development

We review applications on a rolling basis. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted within 7 working days. The selection process includes a technical discussion, a leadership case interview, and a final conversation with the CEO.