Engineering Manager

Cvent; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 9,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Cvent is establishing an AI-first engineering team in Bengaluru to build Splash’s AI-powered features. You will recruit, define standards, and lead a small team to deliver high-impact AI capabilities across the platform.

The role demands deep backend expertise, strong judgment on non-functional requirements, and the ability to coordinate with teams in North America, Europe, and Asia. You’ll drive architectural decisions and champion responsible-AI practices.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with depth in backend systems and 3+ years managing software engineers.
• Depth in Java with Spring Boot; React/TypeScript frontend; GraphQL APIs; relational and NoSQL databases; event-driven microservices on AWS.
• Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted and agentic software development.
• Strong engineering judgment and track record of owning non-functional requirements for production systems.
• Experience shipping AI product features (LLM-powered features, evaluation, cost, latency).
• Cross-geography collaboration with teams in multiple regions.
• Clear communication: write specs and decisions for global time zones.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the founding AI-first engineering team in Bengaluru (4–5 engineers initially).
• Own the AI feature roadmap delivery for Splash in partnership with Product, Design, and regional teams.
• Set engineering standards, review practices, and maintain quality across AI-enabled work.
• Coach engineers, set goals, and conduct performance reviews for career growth.

Skills

Leadership & Hiring

Backend systems

Java with Spring Boot

Frontend TypeScript/React

AI-assisted development

Cross-geography collaboration

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Java

Spring Boot

React/Next.js

TypeScript

GraphQL

AWS

CI/CD

Job description

About Cvent:

www.cvent.com

Cvent is a leading meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider with more than 6,000+ employees and ~34,000+ customers worldwide, including 60% of the Fortune 500. Founded in 1999, Cvent delivers a comprehensive event marketing and management platform for marketers and event professionals and offers software solutions to hotels, special event venues and destinations to help them grow their group/MICE and corporate travel business. Our technology brings millions of people together at events around the world. In short, we’re transforming the meetings and events industry through innovative technology that powers human connection.

Headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, Cvent (formerly NYSE: CVT) was acquired by Blackstone and Vista for $4.6B in 2023.

Cvent's strength lies in its people, fostering a culture where everyone is encouraged to think like entrepreneurs, taking risks and making decisions confidently. We value diverse perspectives and celebrate differences, working together with colleagues and clients to build strong connections.

Cvent is redefining the meetings and events industry through technology that advances human connection.

AI at Cvent: Leading the Future

Are you ready to shape the future of work at the intersection of human expertise and AI innovation? At Cvent, we’re committed to continuous learning and adaptation—AI isn’t just a tool for us, it’s part of our DNA. We’re looking for candidates who are eager to evolve alongside technology. If you love to experiment boldly, share your discoveries, and help define best practices for AI-augmented work, you’ll thrive here. Our team values professionals who thoughtfully integrate AI into their daily work, delivering exceptional results while relying on the human judgment and creativity that drive real innovation.

Throughout our interview process, you’ll have the chance to demonstrate how you use AI to learn, iterate, and amplify your impact. If you’re excited to be part of a team that’s leading the way in AI-powered collaboration, we’d love to meet you.

Role Overview

Splash is Cvent's event marketing platform. We are standing up a new engineering team in Bengaluru with a single charter: build the AI-powered features that will define the next generation of Splash. You will build this team from zero, then lead it as a peer to the established Splash engineering and product teams in Bengaluru, North America, and Spain, who own adjacent parts of the platform and with whom you will plan, design, and ship.

This is an AI-first role in two senses. The team ships AI into the product, and the team builds software with AI: agentic coding tools, spec-driven development, and disciplined review of AI-generated output are the default way of working here, not an experiment. We are looking for a manager whose value comes from engineering judgment and a high quality bar rather than from the volume of code they personally write. You will decide what gets built and how, set the standard for what is good enough to ship, and hold the team to it.

Reporting line: Director of Engineering, Splash India. Team size: 4–5 engineers by the end of the first year, hired by you.

In This Role, You Will:

Build the team (your main job in year one)

• Hire the founding team from 0 to 4–5: define the roles and levels, run the hiring loop end to end, close candidates, and onboard them to be productive quickly.
• Establish the team's engineering standards, operating rhythm, and ways of working from day one, including how AI tools are used, reviewed, and measured.
• Create a culture where engineers own outcomes, learn fast, and hold a high bar for quality.

Lead delivery of AI features for Splash

• Own execution of the AI feature roadmap for Splash in partnership with Product, Design, and the Splash teams in Bangalore, North America, and Spain.
• Make architecture and technology decisions for the team's services and front ends; ensure what ships meets non-functional requirements (security, scalability, resiliency, accessibility, performance) and responsible-AI expectations.
• Run the team across time zones: coordinate dependencies, manage production issues and incidents, and keep stakeholders informed with clear, honest status.

Set the engineering bar in an AI-native workflow

• Define how the team works with agentic coding tools and spec-driven development: what a good spec looks like, when to delegate to an agent, and what must be verified by a human.
• Be the quality gate. Review designs, AI-generated code, tests, and evaluations for correctness, security, and maintainability, and teach the team to do the same.
• Keep the team's tooling and practices current as the AI development landscape changes, and share what works with the wider Splash organization.

Grow people

• Coach engineers, set goals, give direct and timely feedback, and run performance reviews and career development.

Here’s What You Need:

These are requirements, not nice-to-haves. We expect candidates to meet all of them.

• People management and hiring. 12+ years of software engineering experience, with depth in backend systems and 3+ years managing software engineers, with a track record of hiring, onboarding, and growing strong engineers, and the appetite to do that here from the ground up.
• Depth in our stack. Java with Spring Boot for backend services; React or Next.js with TypeScript on the front end; GraphQL APIs; relational and NoSQL databases; event-driven microservices on AWS.
• Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted and agentic software development. You use tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or GitHub Copilot agents in your own work: writing specs an agent can execute, reviewing and correcting its output, and knowing where these tools fail. This must be lived experience, not familiarity with the concepts.
• Strong engineering judgment. You can evaluate a design or a change for correctness, security, scalability, and maintainability without having written it yourself, and you have a track record of owning non-functional requirements for production systems.
• Experience shipping AI product features. You have taken LLM-powered functionality to production (for example retrieval, agents, or structured generation) and understand evaluation, prompt and model lifecycle, cost, latency, and failure modes.
• Cross-geography collaboration. Proven ability to work as a peer with engineering, product, design, and SRE teams in other regions and time zones, including in a matrixed or distributed organization.
• Clear communication. You write specs, decisions, and status updates that people in other time zones can act on without a meeting, and you can explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Education. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have:

• Experience forming a team from scratch (0 to N): defining roles and levels, standing up the hiring loop, and establishing norms rather than inheriting an existing team.
• Experience in event, marketing, or martech products, or other B2B SaaS with high-volume customer-facing workflows.
• Experience building evaluation frameworks or observability for LLM features in production.