Engineering Lead (AI & Automation Products)

dentsu; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Merkle in Bengaluru seeks a Senior Engineering Leader to guide architecture decisions and delivery for a multi‑team product portfolio. You will own data schemas in Postgres and the Claude Code integration layer, shaping automation workflows and security practices across the platform.

You will mentor engineers, enforce coding standards, and drive high‑quality outputs with observable systems. This full‑time, permanent role focuses on scalable backend and frontend coordination using Python APIs,

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading multi‑disciplinary software teams.
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable architectures and oversee delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture decisions across the portfolio including schema design, API contracts, and integration patterns.
• Hold delivery accountability across active workstreams in partnership with product leadership.
• Design and own the Postgres data schema underpinning the product with correctness and extensibility.
• Build and own Claude Code integration layer including prompts, testing, and parsing.
• Design and implement automation workflows with robust retry, audit history and idempotency.
• Oversee third‑party DSP API integrations (e.g., DV360, TTD) with secure scopes.
• Manage secrets / credentials with a central vault and secure access control.
• Design multi‑tenant access control and cost attribution patterns.
• Review outputs against requirements and flag deviations.

Skills

Team leadership

Software architecture

API design

PostgreSQL data modeling

Claude Code integration

Automation workflows

OAuth / security

RBAC / multi-tenant

Code reviews / mentoring

Testing & observability

Sprint planning

Vendor integrations

Tools

FastAPI

React

Tailwind

PostgreSQL

Claude Code

Azure Key Vault

OAuth flows

Git

Job description

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.

Job Description:

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 doesn't 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; escape 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

Location:

Bengaluru

Brand:

Merkle

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent