Engineering
/Founding leadership
VP of Engineering
Engineering Operations
Compensation
INR 60 LPA - 1.1 Cr base + meaningful equity.
Engagement
Full-Time
Permanent role. Full-time commitment. Primarily on-site, with limited remote flexibility.
Scope of role
Build the function from zero. Set the strategy. Own the outcome.
01 — The role
Why this role exists at EduRankAI
The VP of Engineering owns how engineering actually executes. Process, hiring, performance, velocity, on-call — the operating system the org runs on. You and the CTO are a pair: the CTO sets where we're going, you make sure we arrive. You'll thrive here if: you have strong opinions about engineering process and you can defend them against the seductive pull of "let's just ship". You'd rather coach a Senior into a Staff role than hire a Staff from outside. You'll struggle here if: you've never personally written code for a system that paged you at 3am. You think people problems are HR's problem.
02 — The work
What you will own
- 01 Own engineering execution across product, platform, and AI teams.
- 02 Run the hiring loop end-to-end: pipeline, calibration, panel design, offers, closing.
- 03 Set the on-call, deploy, and incident-response processes — and own the result when they break.
- 04 Run quarterly planning, headcount, and budget.
- 05 Defend engineering time from organisational drift (meetings that should be docs, escalations that should be reviews).
- 06 Coach Engineering Managers and senior ICs — direct, kind, written.
- 07 Own production reliability for the platform as a whole.
03 — The expertise
What we look for
04 — The bar
Who thrives here
- → You have run an engineering org of at least 30 ICs and EMs.
- → You have hired and retained at least three Senior or Staff engineers in the last 18 months.
- → You have run at least one Sev-1 incident as commander and written the postmortem yourself.
- → You can describe, in writing, an opinion about engineering process you have changed your mind on — and why.
- → You read code at least weekly even when nobody is asking you to.
05 — Hiring process
What to expect after you apply
- 01
Application review
Every application is read personally within five business days. We respond either way.
- 02
Take-home or live exercise
Role-specific. Time-boxed. Real problems we are actually working on, not invented puzzles.
- 03
Conversations
Deep technical and values conversations with the team you would join. No trick questions. No panel ambushes.
- 04
Offer or honest no
If yes: digital offer letter, signed in-portal, transparent terms. If no: written feedback if you want it.
Before you start
What we will collect. What it costs. What we will not do with it.
We will collect
- Name, email, phone — Account + application updates. No marketing.
- Resume / portfolio link — Human review of your work.
- Date + place of birth — Identity verification only.
- Your written responses — Selection rubric. Read by humans.
- Government ID (later) — Anti-fraud at offer / interview stage. Not at signup.
We will never
- Sell your data
- Share with third-party recruiters
- Use for advertising
- Train models on it
- Send marketing email
Our situation
EduRankAI is a small, independent organization building long-term capabilities in educational intelligence, advanced AI systems, and research infrastructure. We take no advertiser money, no donations with strings attached, and no investor pressure on hiring decisions. Applying is free, and every application is read by a human — recruitment, technical, academic and leadership teams. It buys us the right to be honest.
Ready to apply?
We read every application personally. If you are the right person for this role — regardless of pedigree, background, or where you are based — you will hear back from us within five business days.
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