Director, Data, AI and Product Engineering

Director, Data, AI and Product Engineering

Department: Technology and Innovation  |  Location: Hyderabad, India (hybrid)  |  Type: Full-time

About Astreya

Astreya provides IT support and managed services to leading enterprises. Our services cover data center and network management, digital workplace services such as service desk, audio visual and IT asset management, and digital engineering across software, data, AI and cybersecurity. We help organizations get more from the way their people and technology work together.

About the Role

We are hiring a Director to lead an integrated data, AI and product engineering organization that delivers for enterprise clients. The organization runs production data and reporting services, builds machine learning and generative AI solutions, and designs, builds and operates software products and applications used by client operations teams.

You will own the organization end to end: people and structure, delivery and service levels, technical standards, the product and solution roadmap, and the relationship with senior client stakeholders. You will treat data, AI and product engineering as one practice, where data platforms, models and applications are planned and built together so that each strengthens the others.

This is a hands-on leadership role. We are looking for someone who has done the engineering themselves, has since led the people who do it, and is equally comfortable in a client leadership review and a technical design review.

What You'll Own

• Set the vision, strategy and roadmap for data, analytics, AI and product engineering, and connect it to the outcomes clients care about
• Lead the organization through a layer of team leads across data engineering, analytics, machine learning, generative AI and application development, with clear ownership and accountability
• Run production data, reporting and application services to agreed service levels, with strong operational discipline around monitoring, incident management and data quality
• Direct the design and delivery of new solutions, from data platforms and dashboards to machine learning models, generative AI agents and full-stack applications, taking them from idea to production and adoption
• Own the technical architecture and engineering standards across the organization, including data modeling, API design, security, CI/CD, and architecture decision records
• Set the standard for how AI is built and operated, covering evaluation, documentation, production monitoring, retraining and responsible-AI review
• Make build, extend or buy decisions and keep the portfolio focused on solutions that deliver measurable value
• Balance capacity between steady-state operations and new build so that existing service commitments are protected while new work lands
• Build the organization: structure, hiring, leadership bench, succession, and a culture where engineers own what they ship and raise problems early
• Serve as the senior counterpart to client stakeholders, running a regular governance rhythm of status updates, steering reviews and business reviews
• Own the value story: define how benefits are measured, track realized results against commitments, and report them with conservative, traceable assumptions
• Turn new client requests into prioritized, governed work, and position the roadmap as a way to grow the client relationship
• Manage budget, cloud cost and vendor relationships for the organization

What You'll Bring

• Extensive experience in technology, including significant time leading engineering, data or AI organizations through team leads
• An engineering, analytics or data science background, with enough current depth to review a design, a query or a model evaluation
• A track record of leading data and analytics teams alongside product or application engineering teams
• Experience managing senior client or business stakeholders and negotiating scope, priorities and investment
• Experience building and scaling teams, including hiring senior specialists and developing first-time leaders
• Experience owning a value case or cost-and-benefit model at leadership level and defending how it was built
• Cloud platforms at architecture level, with Google Cloud preferred and AWS or Azure also welcome
• Data engineering and BI, including pipeline design, data modeling, data quality, lineage and modern dashboarding tools
• Applied machine learning and generative AI in production, including LLM, RAG and agent applications, with the evaluation and monitoring discipline to run them safely
• Modern product engineering, including backend services, component-based web frontends, relational databases, containers and CI/CD
• Familiarity with IT service management platforms and ITIL practices
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain a technical tradeoff to an executive in a few sentences
• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; a master's degree or MBA is a plus

Nice to Have

• Experience leading a client-dedicated or captive technology team inside a large enterprise
• Experience in field services, IT asset management or workplace operations
• Experience running onshore and offshore teams across time zones
• Program management certification such as PgMP, PMP or SAFe

What Success Looks Like

• Early on: you are running governance with client stakeholders, you know every team and lead, production services are stable, and the roadmap and hiring plan are agreed.
• Over time: new solutions are live and adopted, the organization has grown to plan, and clients see measurable results they recognize as their own.
• Throughout: no surprises for clients, decisions written down when they are made, and leads growing into the next level.

What Astreya Offers

• Work with leading enterprises as part of the Astreya delivery network
• Career paths built around internal promotion and mobility
• Professional development, online learning and education assistance
• Competitive compensation with insurance, health and wellness benefits