Engineering Lead - Prefab

Modulus Housing; Chennai District; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 5,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Modulus Housing seeks a Head of Engineering for its Modular Building Platforms to lead the transition from traditional civil engineering to a productized construction model. You will architect scalable prefab systems (PEB, LGSF, Modular) and drive factory-first implementation with IIT Madras collaboration.

You will champion First-Principles innovation, build an empowered, high-agency team, and deliver a BIM-to-Factory workflow aligned with ISO 19650, ensuring speed, quality and cost efficiency

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Structural Engineering with IS code knowledge.
• Proven experience in designing and scaling PEB, LGSF, and modular systems.
• Experience in startup or fast-paced environments with a product mindset.

Responsibilities

• Develop productised prefab platforms to scale manufacturing.
• Lead platform development and cost-optimisation strategies.
• Establish BIM-to-Factory workflow with ISO 19650.
• Mentor multidisciplinary teams and drive innovation.
• Collaborate with IIT Madras for design validation and R&D.

Skills

Modular/PEB design experience

Startup/Dynamic environment

Lean/Agile engineering

Manufacturing ERP understanding

Education

Master’s degree in Structural Engineering

IS 800/IS 456/IS 875 knowledge

Tools

STAAD Pro

ETABS

Revit/BIM

Job description

Head of Engineering – Modular Building Platforms

Join the Mission: Engineering the Product of Construction. We aren’t just building projects; we are building a Product Platform. Our mission is to move construction from the field to the factory, transforming how humanity creates shelter. As the Head of Engineering, you are the architect of our "Right to Win." You will lead the transition from traditional, site-heavy civil engineering to a high-precision, Productized Construction model.

The Mandate: Building the Machine that Builds the Buildings

Your core focus is to develop our prefab technology (PEB, LGSF, Modular, and Foldable systems) into a scalable, highly profitable reality. You will bridge the gap between rigorous IS-code-compliant civil engineering and automotive-grade manufacturing precision.

Key Focus Areas & Responsibilities

1. Productisation & The "Right to Win"

• Platform Development: Transition from a "Project" mindset to a "Product" mindset. Develop standardised, reusable, modular building systems that win on cost, speed, and quality.
• Value Engineering for Scale: Use First-Principles Thinking to ruthlessly optimise structural costs. Enable the business to win more projects by engineering out waste without compromising safety.
• Factory-First (IC) Strategy: Drive the engineering roadmap to increase the percentage of construction work done in the factory to 99%, minimising on-site skill requirements.

2. Engineering Systems & Excellence

• Automotive-Level Quality: Develop engineering processes that ensure building quality is measured in millimetres, not centimetres. Implement PFMEA (Process Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) into the design phase.
• DFMA Mastery: Oversee the implementation of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly principles to ensure every component "snaps" together seamlessly on-site with zero rework.
• BIM-to-Factory Pipeline: Establish a robust digital thread using BIM and ISO 19650 standards to automate the flow from design to the fabrication shop floor.

3. Leadership & Innovation

• Mentorship & Growth: Manage and mentor a multidisciplinary team. Foster a culture of high agency where "Nothing is someone else’s problem."
• First-Principles Innovation: Challenge the status quo. Encourage the team to rethink traditional RCC and Steel constraints to develop revolutionary "foldable" or "rapid-deploy" structures.
• Strategic Collaboration: Act as the primary technical interface with IIT Madras (IITM) for design validation, vetting, and cutting-edge R&D.

4. The "Product" Mindset:

• Structural engineering excellence, with a proven track record of moving beyond "blueprints" to "product platforms." You don't just design for codes; you design for the User Persona, understanding how occupants interact with and feel within a modular space.
• Customer-Centric Innovation: 3-5 years leading engineering in a Modular/Prop-tech or startup environment where you successfully translated complex user behaviors and customer feedback into technical structural requirements.
• Behavioral Engineering: Experience in developing building systems that prioritize the "User Journey"—from the ease of intuitive assembly (the "Lego" experience) to the long-term mental and physical well-being of the end-user.
• First-Principles Validation: While your years of experience provide the foundation in PEB/LGSF/RCC, your most important metric is your ability to strip away legacy construction "habits" to build what the customer actually needs: speed, quality, and adaptability.
• Systems Leadership: You have experience managing teams not just to "finish a project," but to build a Modular Building Platform that scales across different demographics and geographies.
• Scale Thinking: You have previously taken a concept from a single prototype to a mass-produced structural system.
• Material Science: Deep knowledge of modern building materials (composite panels, specialised coatings, high-tensile steel) to optimize for "Foldable" and "Modular" mobility.

5. Service Profitability & Commercial Engineering

• Engineering the Margin: You are responsible for the financial health of current service projects. You must ensure that "Design-to-Cost" is a core discipline, identifying high-cost structural bottlenecks in bespoke projects and engineering them out to protect and expand project margins.
• Scaling Profits through Parallelism: You will create the technical framework that allows us to execute multiple service projects simultaneously without a linear increase in engineering overhead, ensuring that as the business scales, the profit per project grows through standardised efficiency.

Skills and Qualifications

• Civil-Structural Foundation: Master’s degree in Structural Engineering with a deep understanding of IS 800, IS 456, IS 875, and related codes (IIT/NIT preferred).
• Modular Pedigree: Proven experience in designing and scaling PEB, LGSF, and Modular systems.
• Startup DNA: High agency and a "scrappy" intensity. You thrive in environments where you have to build systems from scratch rather than just following existing ones.
• Software Vision: Expert proficiency in STAAD Pro, ETABS, and Revit/BIM, with an understanding of how these tools integrate with manufacturing ERPs.
• Methodology: Familiarity with Lean Construction, Agile engineering, and advanced procurement processes.

Behavioural Tendency: The "Ideal DNA"

• First-Principles Thinking: You don't do things because "that's how it's always been done." You break problems down to their fundamental physics and rebuild.
• Product Mindset: You view a building as a high-performance machine, not just a static structure.
• High Agency: You see a bottleneck in the factory or site and you own the solution, regardless of your job title.
• Passion for Humanity: You are driven by the vision of making high-quality, sustainable housing accessible to all of humanity.

Team - Core Values

M.B.T focus (Modular Building Technology)

We are committed to building fast, safe, intuitive beneficial MBT that will have a massive positive impact on people’s future.

Anything that doesn’t help with that is out of scope.

Intense and scrappy

Building something exceptional requires hard work (often on unglamorous stuff) and urgency; everything (that we choose to do) is important.

Be unpretentious and do what works; find the best ideas wherever they come from

Scale

We believe that scale—in our models, our systems, ourselves, our processes, and our ambitions—is magic. When in doubt, scale it up.

Make something people love

Our technology and products should have a transformatively positive effect on people’s lives.

Team spirit

Our biggest advances, and differentiation, come from effective collaboration in and across teams. Although our teams have increasingly different identities and priorities, the overall purpose and goals have to remain perfectly aligned.

Nothing is someone else’s problem.