VP of Engineering

Location: Bangalore, India (Hybrid) - regular travel expected, primarily to China, with occasional travel to the UK
Department: Technology
Reports to: Chief Technology Officer

WHO WE ARE 

At Acclaro, we're more than a localization company — we're a content intelligence solutions company, and a global team of language enthusiasts, cultural connectors, and technology innovators. Our mission is to help brands speak the world's languages and resonate deeply across cultures by blending human expertise with cutting-edge technology, delivered through a follow-the-sun model that keeps our teams moving around the clock and around the globe. 

With over two decades of experience, we support some of the world's most recognizable brands in expanding their global reach. And we're scaling: we've been making material investments in our own AI-native platform, one that's already reshaping how our business — and the localization industry more broadly — works. Join us on our journey to be the model localization company of the next decade, one that's loved by clients, colleagues, and communities alike. 

YOUR NEXT ROLE 

As VP of Engineering, you are the number two in Acclaro's technology organization - reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer, deputizing for them, and owning the engineering org end to end. You will lead a globally distributed team across India and China that we expect to scale to 20–30 engineers when fully staffed.

You're joining at a pivotal moment. Acclaro is undergoing a major structural transformation, building our own proprietary AI platform to stay competitive, and evolving into a truly tech-enabled company. This role sits at the center of that shift - you'll build new technology from the ground up while keeping our existing systems running reliably through the transition.

Two things matter more than anything else in this job. The first is hiring: you will personally build the team that builds the platform, and the quality of that team is the single biggest determinant of whether this transformation works. The second is that you stay technical -s this is not a delegation-only leadership position. You'll be in the codebase, in the pull requests and on the incident calls, and the engineers you hire will judge you on it.

We are building AI-first in both senses: AI in the product, and AI in how the engineering team itself works. If you thrive at the intersection of technology, leadership and business impact, and want the kind of ownership that comes from building something rather than inheriting it, this is that opportunity.

WHAT YOU’LL DO 

• Hire an exceptional team. Own engineering recruiting as your primary deliverable: Defining the bar and the scorecards, sourcing and pitching candidates yourself, running the technical loop, and closing senior hires. Scaling to 20–30 engineers across India and China without lowering the bar is the job.
• Lead and grow them. Set org design, career ladders and a performance culture people want to be part of. Develop first-line managers and tech leads, give direct feedback, and act quickly on both high performers and mis-hires.
• Stay hands-on. Write code where it counts - prototypes, spikes and the hard production problems - and be a regular, visible participant in code reviews and design reviews. Technical credibility is how you will lead this team, and how you will recruit into it.
• Build the AI platform. Lead the build-out of Acclaro's proprietary AI platform: LLM orchestration, retrieval, agentic workflows, evaluation and quality harnesses, model selection and routing, latency and cost control, and human-in-the-loop review at production scale.
• Make the engineering org AI-native in how it works. Set the standard for agentic coding tools, AI-assisted review and testing, and automated toil reduction - then measure the leverage it creates and raise it every quarter. You are expected to hold strong, current opinions here and to change them as the tooling changes.
• Own the architecture. Drive architectural reviews and major technology and build-versus-buy decisions, balancing innovation, scalability, reliability, security and maintainability across both green-field and legacy estates.
• Ship predictably. Establish and continuously improve engineering standards, development practices, CI/CD, testing and quality frameworks - and own delivery predictability, uptime and platform health through measurable goals and KPIs.
• Partner across the business. Work with Product, Design, Operations and commercial leaders to translate company priorities into scalable execution plans and technology roadmaps.
• Be there when it breaks. Be personally present during major incidents - not just briefed afterward - and own disaster recovery planning, security readiness and business continuity.
• Deputize for the CTO. Represent engineering at executive level and act as a trusted technical voice with clients, partners and external stakeholders. Own engineering budgets, infrastructure investment and vendor relationships alongside the CTO.
• Keep us safe and compliant. Ensure technology practices align with security, privacy and data protection requirements across global markets. 

THIS ROLE IS FOR YOU IF YOU 

• Have 10+ years building software and 5+ years leading engineers, including responsibility for a team of 20 or more across multiple locations
• Are still a genuinely strong engineer - you can design a system, review a pull request with authority, and debug a production issue yourself. Expect a technical deep dive as part of our process
• Have hired at pace and at quality: senior and staff-level hires you closed personally, an interview process you designed that other teams trusted, and a track record of retaining the people you hired
• Have built with LLMs in production, not just in prototypes - retrieval, agentic workflows, evaluation harnesses, prompt and model operations, and the latency, cost and quality trade-offs that come with them, including knowing when AI is the wrong answer
• Use AI tooling in your own daily engineering work and have rolled it out across a team, with a clear view of what it did and didn't improve
• Have done this in a startup or scale-up environment - comfortable with ambiguity, constrained budgets and no existing playbook, and energized by building rather than inheriting
• Have run green-field development and legacy modernization in parallel without letting either one stall
• Are experienced with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure or GCP), APIs, microservices, data pipelines, and modern development practices such as CI/CD and infrastructure as code
• Have led distributed engineering teams across multiple countries, cultures and time zones, and write clearly enough to lead asynchronously
• Are an exceptional communicator who can adapt complex technical concepts for executive, customer and non-technical audiences, and who leads with clarity and empathy
• Hold a degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or have equivalent professional experience 

YOU’LL STAND OUT IF YOU 

• Have been a CTO, VP of Engineering or founding engineer at an early-stage company that scaled successfully
• Have taken a multi-tenant SaaS platform from zero to enterprise-grade, including the security and reliability work enterprise customer’s demand
• Bring hands-on experience with localization technologies, translation management systems, or global content platforms
• Have hired and led engineering teams in India and other countries.
• Have led modernization projects that turned legacy systems into scalable, integrated solutions
• Understand global compliance and security frameworks such as GDPR, SOC 2, or ISO certifications
• Are multilingual, or have deep experience working across distributed, multicultural teams
• Have a public body of technical work – open-source contributions, writing, or conference talks 

WHAT SUCCESS LOOK LIKE

• First 90 days. The hiring plan, scorecards and interview loop are in place, and the first senior hires are in flight. You have completed a clear-eyed assessment of the AI platform and the legacy estate - and you have shipped something yourself.
• By six months. The team is growing to plan with no compromise on quality, first-line leadership is in place, and engineering standards and CI/CD are established. The AI platform has a predictable delivery cadence.
• By twelve months. The team is at or near full strength at 20–30 engineers, retained and performing. The AI platform is live and carrying real client volume, and there is measurable improvement in delivery velocity and engineering leverage from AI-native ways of working.

INCLUSION & EQUAL OPPORTUNITY - Acclaro is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment decisions are made based on qualifications, merit, and business needs.