Job Description :

Role : Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Location : Bangalore, India Full-Time Leadership Band - startup experience- SAAS based.

Reports To : Founder & CEO

Location : Bangalore, India (with travel as required)

Function : Technology & Product

Level : C-Suite / Executive Leadership

Team Size : ~40 Engineers, Architects & Delivery Leads

Employment : Full-Time, Permanent

Company Stage :

Series A | ~$2M ARR | 120 employees | 15+ countries

The CTO will be the chief architect of Companys vision building world-class products, leading an AI-first engineering culture, and directly enabling revenue growth and global expansion.

Role Context & Strategic Mandate :

This is a defining hire. The CTO will own end-to-end technology leadership from product architecture and platform engineering to delivery governance and AI innovation. You will be an equal partner to the CEO in shaping Companys roadmap through a $5M fundraise (targeted Q4 2026) and beyond.

The first 90 days will focus on three priorities :

- Stabilising and accelerating the Jago AI platform MCP architecture, Zoho integrations, voice interface, and enterprise-grade security.

- Taking direct ownership of the AI-first internal transformation workstreams already in flight.

- Building a high-performance engineering organization : hiring, processes, OKRs, and delivery cadence.

Key Responsibilities :

1. Technology Strategy & Vision :

- Define and own Companys multi-year technology roadmap aligned to business growth, fundraising, and global expansion.

- Lead the evolution of Jago AI from an internal AI tool toward a scalable, multi-tenant SaaS product on MCP and Claude.

- Establish the company as a recognized technology innovator in the Zoho ecosystem and broader enterprise AI space.

- Advise the Board and CEO on technology trends, competitive positioning, and build-vs-buy decisions.

2. Product Engineering & Architecture :

- Architect and govern the Jago AI platform voice interface, agentic workflows, MCP integration, Zoho CRM/Books/Projects connectors, and Claude API orchestration.

- Ensure platform scalability, reliability, and security to support enterprise clients across 15+ countries.

- Drive ISO 27001 certification maintenance and evolve the cybersecurity posture in partnership with Thiru Labs.

- Define and enforce engineering standards : code quality, CI/CD, test coverage, documentation, and DevSecOps.

3. AI-First Transformation Leadership :

- Own the technical execution of Companys internal AI automation mandate 44+ Finance bots, 53 HR bots, and cross-department automation.

- Lead five AAE (AI Automation Engineering) Champion workstreams and ensure delivery against the Q2 2026 milestones.

- Build and maintain Companys AI Centre of Excellence tooling, LLM evaluation frameworks, prompt engineering, and agent orchestration.

- Partner with the CEO to embed AI capabilities into Companys client delivery methodology.

4. Engineering Organization & Talent :

- Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing team of ~40 engineers, architects, and delivery leads.

- Establish career frameworks, performance OKRs, and a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous learning.

- Scale the GEEP (Graduate Engineer Employability Program) as a talent pipeline for Companys engineering function.

- Partner with HR on technical hiring, onboarding, and retention strategy.

5. Client & Commercial Engagement :

- Act as the primary technical voice in enterprise sales, pre-sales, and strategic account management.

- Support the CXpC Oman franchise launch with replicable technology infrastructure and technical enablement.

- Represent the company in technical due diligence processes for the $5M fundraise and future M&A activity.

- Engage with Anthropic, Zoho, and other strategic technology partners at a senior technical level.

6. Delivery Governance & Quality :

- Own end-to-end delivery governance : sprint planning, milestone tracking, risk management, and stakeholder reporting.

- Establish an engineering operations function with clear metrics velocity, defect rates, uptime SLAs, and customer satisfaction.

- Intervene and stabilise at-risk client implementations (e.g., post-go-live crises) with urgency and authority.

Qualifications & Experience :

1. Educational Background :

- B.Tech / B.E. / M.Tech from an IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology) mandatory requirement.

- Postgraduate degree (MBA / MS / PhD) from a premier institution (IIM, IISc, Stanford, MIT, or equivalent) is a strong advantage.

- Deep academic grounding in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI/ML, or a related discipline.

2. Experience Essential :

- 15+ years in technology roles, with at least 5 years in a CTO, VP Engineering, or Head of Product & Engineering capacity.

- Proven track record of taking AI-native or SaaS products from 0-to-1 (MVP) through to enterprise-grade, multi-tenant production deployment.

- Experience leading engineering teams of 20+ in fast-growth, resource-constrained environments ideally in a Series A / B technology company.

- Demonstrated ownership of technical due diligence, investor reporting, and technology representation in fundraising or M&A contexts.

- Prior P&L or engineering cost-centre ownership with accountability for budget, headcount, and delivery outcomes.

3. Product Development Experience :

- End-to-end product lifecycle ownership : ideation, architecture, sprint planning, QA, release management, and post-launch iteration.

- Experience building and shipping multi-tenant SaaS platforms with complex integration ecosystems (CRM, ERP, financial systems).

- Deep familiarity with voice-enabled or conversational AI products NLP pipelines, ASR/TTS, dialogue management, and real-time analytics.

- Track record of building agentic AI systems : tool-use frameworks, autonomous workflows, multi-step reasoning chains, and LLM evaluation harnesses.

- Hands-on experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or equivalent context-management and tool-orchestration architectures.

- Experience integrating and product lising enterprise APIs at scale Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Projects, or comparable ERP/CRM platforms.

- Strong product sense ability to translate business problems into technical solutions and technical constraints into product trade-offs.

4. Technical Stack Required Proficiency :

1. AI / ML & LLM Orchestration :

- LLM APIs : Anthropic Claude (claude-opus-4, claude-sonnet-4), OpenAI GPT-4 / o-series, Google Gemini Pro

- Agentic frameworks : LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent orchestration libraries

- MCP (Model Context Protocol) server/client architecture, tool registration, and context streaming

- ML platforms : HuggingFace, AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, or Google Vertex AI

- Vector databases : Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, or pgvector for RAG architectures

- Voice AI : Whisper (ASR), ElevenLabs / Azure Speech (TTS), real-time audio streaming pipelines

2. Backend Engineering & APIs :

- Languages : Python (primary), Node.js / TypeScript; Java or Go (secondary)

- API design : REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets; API gateway patterns and versioning strategy

- Frameworks : FastAPI, Django, Express.js, Spring Boot

- Message queues & event streaming : Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS/SNS

- Databases : PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis; query optimisation at scale

3. Cloud, Infrastructure & DevSecOps :

- Cloud platforms : AWS (primary), Azure, or GCP solutions architect-level proficiency

- Containerization : Docker, Kubernetes (EKS / AKS / GKE), Helm charts

- Infrastructure as Code : Terraform, AWS CDK, or Pulumi

- CI/CD pipelines : GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD

- Observability : Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK stack; SLI/SLO/SLA definition and monitoring

4. Security & Compliance :

- ISO 27001 ISMS governance certification implementation or oversight experience

- DevSecOps : SAST/DAST tooling, secrets management (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), OWASP practices

- Identity & access : OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, Active Directory / LDAP integration

- Data privacy : GDPR, India DPDP Act, and multi-jurisdictional compliance across 15+ countries

5. Frontend & Visualisation :

- React / Next.js or Vue.js for enterprise web dashboards and portals

- Mobile-first design principles; React Native or Flutter awareness

- Data visualisation : Recharts, D3.js, or BI tool integration (Power BI, Zoho Analytics)

6. Enterprise Integrations :

- Zoho ecosystem : CRM, Books, Projects, Analytics, Flow, Creator APIs (zoho.com and zoho.in data centres)

- ERP/HRMS : SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Darwinbox, Workday, or ServiceNow

- Telephony & communication : Twilio, WhatsApp Business API, MS Teams / Slack integrations

Highly Desirable :

- Open-source contributions or published technical writing / patents in AI, distributed systems, or SaaS architecture.

- Prior startup founder or early-stage CTO experience understanding of zero-to-one product development constraints.

- Exposure to franchise or multi-geography technology rollouts and replicable platform architectures.

- Track record of building AI automation COEs bot development, RPA, or intelligent process automation at enterprise scale.

Leadership Attributes :

- Builder mindset energised by creating structure from ambiguity and leading in a high-growth environment.

- Strategic and hands-on equally comfortable in boardroom conversations and architecture review sessions.

- High accountability sets clear expectations, owns outcomes, and drives delivery with urgency.

- Collaborative communicator earns trust with engineers, clients, investors, and executive peers.

- Adaptable and resilient thrives under the parallel demands of product innovation, client delivery, and organisational scaling.

Performance Metrics Year 1 :

Metric

Target

Jago AI Platform Enterprise-ready v1.0 launch

Q3 2026

AI-First Transformation : 70% productivity uplift

Q4 2026

Internal automation bots live (Finance + HR)

80+ bots by Q3 2026

Engineering team NPS / retention

8.0 / < 15% attrition

Platform uptime SLA (client deployments)

99.5%

ISO 27001 sustained & zero critical findings

Continuous

Technical due diligence $5M fundraise

Q4 2026 close

CXpC Oman : technology infrastructure live

Q3 2026

Compensation & Benefits :

Company offers a competitive executive compensation package commensurate with experience and calibre :

- Competitive fixed salary benchmarked at CTO level for a Series A technology company in Bangalore.

- Performance bonus linked to company ARR growth, Jago AI milestones, and fundraise outcomes.

- Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) meaningful equity participation in Companys growth story.

- Health & wellness coverage comprehensive medical insurance for self and family.

- Professional development access to AI/ML conferences, certifications, and executive coaching.

- Flexible leadership culture outcome-driven, with the autonomy to build the technology function your way.