Director, Software Engineering

Contactverse; India; Remote; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote working

Direct access to founders

Long-term incentive

Job summary

ContactVerse Galactic Labs Limited is seeking an experienced senior engineering leader to head the Engineering POD. You will manage day-to-day activities, ensure honest status across schedule, code, and dashboards, and enforce effective code review and release discipline.

You will mentor early-career engineers and coordinate onboarding for new joiners while collaborating with Platform and Quality peers. The role requires hands-on capability, extensive leadership experience, and availability for

Qualifications

• Eight years or more in software engineering, including three or more managing a team of six to fifteen.
• Still hands-on: reviews code and can pair with an engineer who is stuck.
• Has run a team that included contractors and early-career engineers, not only permanent seniors.
• Strong on delivery mechanics and on telling the truth about status.
• Has introduced code review or release discipline to a team that lacked it.
• Python and FastAPI, or close enough to be credible in week one.
• Available for a working overlap into the evening IST, which is when the team operates.

Responsibilities

• Run the pod day to day: assignment, review, merge and release.
• Own honest status: schedule, code and dashboard alignment.
• Own code review: set standards and culture that are useful.
• Grow the developers: one-to-ones, feedback and a visible path.
• Own the pull request discipline: main changes via PRs with protections.
• Protect focus: shield the pod from churn and interruptions.
• Be the escalation point: handle technical and other issues.
• Own onboarding into the pod: access, environment and first task.
• Work with Platform and Quality: align with peer directors on delivery and quality.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Python

FastAPI

Code review

Release discipline

Team coaching

Delivery discipline

Tools

GitHub Actions

Alembic migrations

AWS

Job description

This is the role ContactVerse most needs filled.

Location India, Remote

Job ID POS-013

Posted Oct 14, 2026

About the role

This is the role ContactVerse most needs filled. We have a pod of developers shipping endpoints across Core and the industry verticals, most of them early in their careers, several engaged through vendors, and no engineering manager between them and the founder. The consequences are visible: status in the schedule that disagrees with the code, defects that reach production, and knowledge that leaves when a contract ends. You would head the Engineering POD and be the person a developer asks before guessing.

What you will do

• Run the pod day to day. Assignment, review, merge and release, with a rhythm people can rely on.
• Own honest status. The schedule, the code and the dashboard agreeing. An endpoint marked built is built, deployed means deployed.
• Own code review. Including the standard for what gets through, and the culture that makes review useful rather than ceremonial.
• Grow the developers. Several are early-career and have been shipping without much structure. One-to-ones, feedback and a visible path.
• Own the pull request discipline. Changes to main through a pull request, migration branches gated, and nobody force-pushing their way out of trouble.
• Protect focus. Shield the pod from the churn that comes with a fast-moving company, and absorb the interruptions yourself.
• Be the escalation point. Technical and otherwise. If a developer is stuck for a day, that is your problem before it is theirs.
• Own onboarding into the pod. Access, environment, first task and the first review, so a new joiner ships in a week.
• Work with Platform and Quality. Your two peer directors. Delivery, infrastructure and quality fail together or not at all.

Your first year

First 90 days. The pod operating predictably: assignment, review, merge and release, with honest status.

By six months. Developers growing measurably, and a review culture that catches defects before release.

By twelve months. A team that does not need you in the room to make a good decision.

What you will bring

• Eight years or more in software engineering, including three or more managing a team of six to fifteen.
• Still hands‑on: reviews code and can pair with an engineer who is stuck.
• Has run a team that included contractors and early‑career engineers, not only permanent seniors.
• Strong on delivery mechanics and on telling the truth about status.
• Has introduced code review or release discipline to a team that lacked it.
• Python and FastAPI, or close enough to be credible in week one.
• Has grown an engineer from struggling to solid, and can describe how.
• Available for a working overlap into the evening IST, which is when the team operates.

Nice to have

• AWS and GitHub Actions.
• Experience with Alembic or similar migration tooling against shared databases.
• Has worked with staffing vendors and knows how to hold them to a standard.
• Experience of a team that went from no process to some process without revolt.

What you will work with

Python and FastAPI on AWS, GitHub with branch protection and required pull requests into main, Alembic migrations in dedicated repositories, GitHub Actions on self-hosted runners, and a staffing schedule that developers maintain themselves.

What this role is not

Not a people manager who left the code behind. You will still review it.

How we work

The team works to a UK-aligned pattern, with the main working overlap in the evening IST. These hours are indicative and may change as the business changes; any change would be discussed rather than imposed. Development happens on company-provided remote machines. Everything is remote and nobody is in an office.

We are a small company and we write things down. Decisions are recorded, corrections are made to the source rather than to the output, and status is expected to be honest even when it is unwelcome.

Compensation and what we offer

• A long‑term incentive, discussed at offer stage for senior appointments.
• Fully remote working, with company‑provided equipment where the role requires it.
• A role with unusual scope for its level, because the organisation is being built rather than joined.
• Direct access to the founders. There are no layers between this role and the people making the decisions.

How we will assess you

We assess against three or four weighted signals agreed before we read a single CV, rather than against years of experience or a list of tools. Expect four stages:

• Introductory conversation with our People team. About 30 minutes, covering the role, your background and what you are looking for. This first conversation may be with an AI assistant; you will be told at the time and may ask to speak to a person instead.
• Conversation with the hiring manager. About 60 minutes, going deep on what you have done and how you think.
• A working session on a real ContactVerse problem. About 90 minutes. Not a whiteboard exercise and not a take‑home test you do unpaid in your evenings.
• Final conversation with the founders. Covering fit, expectations and how we would work together.

We aim to complete the process within three weeks and to give you a decision, with reasons, within three working days of the final stage.

Equal opportunity

ContactVerse is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications regardless of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We select against the published signals for the role and nothing else. If you need an adjustment at any stage of the process, tell us and we will make it. It will not count against you.

Research consistently shows that some candidates apply only when they meet every criterion. If this role interests you and you meet most of what is listed, please apply.