Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering — goSTOPS

Location: Base Bengaluru (HSR) · Travel: To sites as new properties come online

Experience: Senior / leadership level, MEP & hospitality infrastructure background

Reports to: COO

About the Role

goSTOPS is building something that barely exists in India yet: an organised, branded, tech-run youth-travel hostel network, backed by Blume Ventures. Around 4,000 beds today and growing fast. We're taking one of the most unorganised corners of Indian hospitality and turning it into a real category — the kind of growth a large legacy hotel brand simply can't offer.

This role owns our physical infrastructure across every property — the actual machines that keep a hostel alive: HVAC and VRV, water heating, pool filtration, STP, pumps, electricals, and civil works. You're the SME, but not the textbook kind. A solution sized for a large commercial building won't survive a 30-room property in a hill town with one technician and a four-hour drive to the nearest spare part. We need grounded solutions that hold up on a Tuesday.

What You'd Run

• Own MEP, cooling, STP, water systems and filtration performance across the entire network — set the standard and hold every property to it.
• Spot problems before they escalate — the COO shouldn't be the one flagging that a chiller is struggling at a property; you should already have it handled.
• Own the engineering cost line — R&M and utilities. Track how machine condition drives total cost of ownership, and carry the target to bring those costs down.
• Build and audit MEP snag lists for every new site as it's signed — walk the property, assess it, and hand back a plan built for that specific building.
• Stay close to the machines, the ground teams and daily reality, while steadily pulling the whole network toward the standard it should hit.
• Travel to sites when it counts — new signings, recurring issues, or properties falling behind standard.

The Honest Part

This is a build role, not a maintain-what-exists role. You'll be creating standards and systems for a category that doesn't have an established playbook in India yet. Some days you're deep in data and cost models; other days you're on-site with one technician and a machine that's about to fail. The right person can move fluidly between both — comfortable owning outcomes without a fully staffed team or an established process to lean on everywhere.

You'll Fit If

• You have strong hands-on experience in MEP, HVAC/VRV, cooling systems, STP, pool and water systems, and civil infrastructure — ideally across multiple sites.
• You can design solutions for lean, real-world constraints, not just large-format textbook specs.
• You're comfortable owning cost and P&L accountability for engineering, not just technical delivery.
• You're logical, analytical, data-driven and process-oriented.
• You're genuinely ambitious about building something from the ground up, not maintaining a legacy system.

You Won't Fit If

• You want a role confined to headquarters with occasional site visits only.
• You expect fully built playbooks and mature SOPs to already be in place.
• You're not comfortable being hands-on with machines and ground teams when needed.
• You'd rather escalate a problem than get ahead of it yourself.

Work Mode: Office-based at HSR, Bengaluru, with travel to sites as new properties come online or issues require it.

How this role is measured, quarter on quarter:

Engineering cost (R&M + utilities) trend, chiller/HVAC/STP uptime and failure rate, new-site snag list closure rate, and audit/compliance scores across properties.

To Apply: Email your CV to [HIDDEN TEXT] with subject line Head of Engineering — [Your Name]

This role has specific requirements — please apply only if your background is a strong match.