Engineering Manager

Keka HR; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 3,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Real ownership of outcomes

AI tools used daily

People-first culture

Job summary

Keka HR is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead multiple product squads and deliver quality outcomes. You will oversee 8–12 engineers and collaborate with Product, Design, QA, and Architecture to achieve business goals.

This position emphasizes technical leadership and accountability for delivery impact. Join a people-first culture that prioritizes high performance and innovation with AI tools integral to daily engineering practices.

Qualifications

• 12–14 years of software engineering experience, including 4 years in a people-management role.
• Track record of owning delivery outcomes with accountability for quality and business impact.
• Strong technical depth and ability to lead architecture discussions.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery, quality, and people outcomes for product squads.
• Lead 8–12 engineers and manage their growth.
• Translate business goals into engineering execution.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Delivery outcome accountability

Technical depth

Structured hiring and coaching

Delivery metrics fluency

Customer-first mindset

Cloud-native architectures

AI coding tools usage

Job description

About Keka

Keka HR is one of India's fastest-growing HRTech platforms, trusted by thousands of businesses across India, the GCC, and the United States. Built with an employee‑first approach, Keka helps organisations manage HR, Payroll, Performance, and Employee Experience — seamlessly, at scale.

Our engineering team is in the middle of an ambitious transformation — raising the quality bar, accelerating delivery velocity, modernising our architecture, and embedding AI into everything we build. We’re hiring leaders who not only manage teams but also build systems that make teams stronger.

About the Role

Reporting to DOE. As a Senior Engineering Manager at Keka, you will own the end‑to‑end delivery, quality, and people outcomes for one or more product squads. You’ll lead 8–12 engineers — a mix of senior individual contributors and tech leads — and be accountable for what your teams ship, how they ship it, and whether the people on your team are growing.

You’ll partner deeply with Product, Design, QA, and Architecture to translate business goals into engineering execution. You’ll set the quality bar, drive delivery predictability, build a culture of ownership, and ensure every investment your team makes is connected to a measurable customer or business outcome.

This is not a project management role. We’re looking for a leader with genuine technical depth who can hold the room during an architecture discussion, make hard trade‑off calls with conviction, and earn the respect of senior engineers through judgment — not just authority.

Must Have

• 12–14 years of software engineering experience with at least 4 years in a people‑management role leading teams of 10+ engineers.
• Track record of owning delivery outcomes end‑to‑end — accountability for what shipped, its quality, and its business impact.
• Strong technical depth — can hold architecture discussions, review system designs, and earn the respect of senior engineers.
• Evidence of structured hiring, coaching, performance management, and talent development with measurable outcomes.
• Fluency with delivery metrics (sprint accuracy, cycle time, DORA metrics) and the ability to improve them without gaming them.
• Customer‑first mindset — can articulate the business metrics your team has contributed to, not just engineering output.
• Experience with cloud‑native architectures, distributed systems, and modern engineering practices (CI/CD, observability, IaC).
• Active daily user of AI coding tools with a clear point of view on AI‑augmented engineering workflows.

Strong Plus

• Experience in B2B SaaS, HR tech, or enterprise product engineering at scale (multi‑tenant, high availability).
• Led an AI‑first transformation — team‑wide AI adoption, AI code quality tracking, LLM infrastructure (proxies, MCP servers, prompt libraries).
• Experience managing managers or tech leads — multi‑layer leadership with demonstrated scaling through others.
• Built and shipped internal developer platforms, tooling, or engineering standards that raised org‑wide productivity.
• Experience in compliance‑sensitive domains — GDPR, SOC2, multi‑tenant security, PII data processing at scale.
• Strong executive communication — can present engineering strategy to senior leadership and translate business goals into technical roadmaps.
• Demonstrated growth mindset — can trace a direct line from specific past mistakes to how you operate today.

Why Join Keka

• Real Ownership — you won't be a process layer between product and engineers. You’ll own outcomes, make hard calls, and see the direct impact of your decisions on customers and the business.
• AI‑First, Not AI‑Adjacent — every engineer at Keka uses AI tools daily. We’re investing in LLM infrastructure, MCP servers, and agent frameworks. If you want to lead at the frontier of how engineering teams work, this is the place.
• People‑First Culture, Performance‑First Standards — we believe high performance comes from systems, not heroics. From clarity, not pressure. From trust, not control.
• Scale That Matters — Keka serves millions of employees across 8,000+ companies. Your engineering decisions will directly impact how people get paid and how organisations manage their most important asset.
• Growth Trajectory — Keka is targeting 100% YoY growth. This isn’t maintenance mode — it’s a rocketship that needs great engineering leadership to fly safely at speed.