Director Engineering, RLE

We're hiring a Director of Engineering to build and scale Handshake AI's engineering organization in India. This is a rare opportunity to build an engineering organization from the ground up. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership in the US to hire exceptional engineers, establish our engineering culture, and grow India into a core extension of Handshake AI Engineering. You'll begin by building our first engineering teams across Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE), Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), International Expansion, and other strategic initiatives. As the organization grows, you'll help shape the technical direction, operating model, and culture of the India engineering organization while ensuring our teams operate as one engineering organization alongside our US teams. We're looking for a builder who thrives in zero-to-one environments, moves quickly through ambiguity, attracts exceptional talent, and raises the bar everywhere they go. This role requires someone who combines strong technical judgment with relentless execution, builds trust quickly, and is passionate about building high-performing engineering teams from the ground up. Location: Bengaluru, India. This is an in-office role.

Responsibilities

Build Handshake AI's engineering organization in India by hiring, developing, and leading exceptional engineers; Partner closely with Engineering, Research, Product, and Operations leaders in the US to execute against a shared roadmap and build one globally integrated engineering organization; Scale engineering teams across Reinforcement Learning Environments (RLE), Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), International Expansion, and future strategic initiatives; Create a culture of ownership, urgency, technical excellence, and high accountability that attracts and retains top engineering talent; Drive engineering execution across multiple teams while maintaining a high bar for quality, reliability, and long-term maintainability; Help define the technical direction, engineering practices, and operating model for the India engineering organization; Coach and develop engineers while raising the bar for technical excellence and execution; Serve as a trusted partner to engineering leadership while helping shape the long-term vision for Handshake AI Engineering

Requirements

Founding builder: Experience building engineering teams or organizations from the ground up. You thrive in zero-to-one environments and know how to create structure, attract exceptional talent, and scale teams without sacrificing speed or quality.; Exceptional people leader: Proven success hiring, developing, and retaining high-performing engineering teams. You have a high talent bar and know how to build teams that other exceptional engineers want to join.; Strong technical foundation: Experience leading organizations building distributed systems, platform infrastructure, AI platforms, or large-scale software products.; Experience partnering with US engineering teams: Proven success working closely with US-based engineering organizations or globally distributed teams. You know how to build trust, establish strong operating rhythms, and execute effectively across time zones.; Execution through ambiguity: You create clarity, make decisions quickly, and consistently deliver results in fast-moving, evolving environments.; Influence and communication: Outstanding ability to align stakeholders, inspire teams, and build trust across Engineering, Product, Research, and Operations.; Ownership mentality: You set ambitious goals, hold yourself and your teams accountable, and lead by example.; Growth mindset: You're excited to stay technically engaged while building an engineering organization that can scale for years to come.

Nice to have

Experience with reinforcement learning infrastructure, simulation systems, or AI evaluation platforms; Experience supporting applied AI or machine learning research teams; Experience building customer-facing platforms, developer platforms, or large-scale distributed systems; Familiarity with AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, APIs, and modern engineering stacks; Experience working in a fast-growing startup or hypergrowth environment

Benefits

Generous Equity Grant vested over 4 years; Housing Bonus: 1.3 Lakhs spread throughout the first year; Well Defined Performance Bonus ranging between 10 - 100% of base; Medical Insurance Coverage; Food credit for every in person day