Head of AI / Country Director (Visakhapatnam, India)

Our group of companies is looking a Head of AI / Country Director to scale and lead our regional engineering center in Visakhapatnam, India. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will own the delivery of production-grade enterprise AI capabilities while building a world-class local engineering team. This pivotal role offers a direct progression path to India Managing Director, expanding your mandate from technical execution to full regional site operations and strategy.

Your Mission:

You will serve as the strategic and operational lead for our engineering organization in Visakhapatnam. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will own the delivery of production-grade AI capabilities while building, scaling, and leading the regional center. For a high-performing leader, this position is structured as a clear stepping stone to Country Manager / India Managing Director, expanding your mandate to encompass site operations, cross-functional leadership, and regional strategy.

Your Responsibilities:

• AI Leadership & Execution: Own the end-to-end execution of AI roadmap, translating executive strategy into rapid, scalable delivery.
• Team Scaling & Management: Recruit, mentor, and manage high-performing applied AI, ML, and evaluation teams in Vizag.
• Strategic Alignment: Partner with executive leadership to evaluate emerging tech (LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows) and align localized engineering efforts with business priorities.
• Delivery Excellence: Balance rapid iteration with rigorous AI governance, explainability, and risk-based Total Product Lifecycle (TPLC) standards.
• Operational Leadership (Country Manager Track): Drive local site culture, talent strategy, operational budgets, and vendor/university partnerships to position the Vizag hub as core innovation engine.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, or related engineering fields.
• Technical Experience: 8+ years developing and deploying production-grade enterprise AI/ML solutions in cloud environments (AWS/Azure).
• Leadership Experience: 4+ years leading applied AI or engineering teams, with a track record of driving concurrent, complex projects to production.
• AI Expertise: Deep familiarity with modern stack capabilities (LLMs, RAG, Vector DBs, Evaluation Frameworks, and fine-tuning models).
• Regulated Domain: Experience building solutions under strict data governance, explainability, or compliance standards (Healthcare/Life Sciences preferred).
• Strategic Drive: Strong business acumen and the operational mindset required to grow and manage a regional delivery center.

Success Metrics

• On-time delivery of production-ready AI features to international markets.
• Reduced concept-to-production cycle times across all local AI workstreams.
• Successful scaling, retention, and operational maturity of the Vizag engineering center.

Career Progression Path

• Months 1–6 (Head of AI): Establish a high-velocity execution cadence, clear delivery bottlenecks, and scale the local AI team in Vizag.
• Months 6–18 (Country Manager Track): Expand leadership beyond AI delivery to oversee regional site operations, cross-functional integrations, local HR/talent strategy, and legal compliance—formally transitioning into the Country Manager role as the Vizag center matures while still carrying responsibilities of the Head of AI.

Reporting Structure

• Reports directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).