Engineering Lead (AI & Automation Products)

Job Summary

The purpose of this role is to lead, develop and improve teams of software engineers with various skills, so that a high-quality end product is delivered. To provide technical guidance, to support analysis and design in order to deliver products aligned to the customer s requirements and company standards.

Responsibilities

Technical Architecture & Delivery

• Lead architecture decisions across the portfolio - schema design, API contracts, integration patterns, workflow orchestration, and when to integrate via direct API versus MCP (Model Context Protocol), weighing latency, control, security, auditability, and reusability tradeoffs
• Hold delivery accountability - scope, timeline, quality - across all active workstreams, in partnership with the Director who owns product requirements and prioritization
• Design and own the Postgres data schema underpinning the product (multi-table: pipeline data, access control, cost attribution, audit) - correctness and extensibility here is foundational, not incidental
• Build and own the Claude/API integration layer: system prompt design and testing, multimodal document ingestion for XLSX, DOCX, PPTX, and PDF via reliable extraction/conversion pipelines, structured output parsing, schema validation, and fallback handling
• Design practical automation workflows - background jobs, queues, retries, idempotency, human review points, run state, and replayable audit history for multi-step AI-assisted processes
• Build and own third-party DSP API integrations (e.g. DV360, TTD) - OAuth flows, structured data file formats, read/write scoping by phase
• Design and own secrets and credential management - API keys, OAuth credentials, Azure Key Vault or equivalent secrets manager; nothing in code or environment variables in source control
• Design and own multi-tenant access control - role-based permissions, client-scoped data visibility, self-service onboarding
• Design cost and usage attribution patterns - external API calls tagged and logged at the client and run level, feeding finance and program-level reporting as the portfolio scales
• Review technical output against product requirements - flag when implementation doesnt match the requirement or the architecture is wrong for the problem

Team Leadership

• Manage a team of junior and mid-level developers based in India - hiring input, onboarding, performance, growth planning
• Run code reviews, pairing, and technical mentoring as a standing practice, not an occasional one
• Set and enforce engineering standards: testing discipline, data validation, AI evaluation discipline, observability, and code quality bar
• Standardize how the team uses Claude Code - establish shared conventions, prompt/context patterns, and reusable practices so the whole team improves its delivery quality, not just you
• Run sprint-level technical planning and unblock the team day to day; escalate cross-team blockers to the Director rather than letting them stall delivery

Build Execution

• Build full-stack applications end to end where needed: Python APIs (FastAPI or similar) and React/Tailwind front ends
• Use Claude Code as a daily driver - both for personal output and as the standard tool your team is held to
• Write tests, build data validation frameworks, and instrument observability across the pipeline, including prompt/model traces, structured-output validation, latency, cost, and failure analytics
• Build and maintain practical evaluation harnesses for AI behavior - golden test sets, prompt/model versioning, regression checks, failure taxonomies, and release gates for higher-risk automations
• Contribute to reusable component libraries and shared platform services that scale across clients and future portfolio products

Job Details

Location: Bengaluru

Brand: Merkle

Time Type: Full time

Contract Type: Permanent