Senior Technical Lead

Straive; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Straive, a global data analytics leader, is seeking a highly technical Senior AI/ML Tech Lead to drive design, development, and deployment of Generative AI applications. This dual-impact role combines architectural leadership with hands-on coding across Python, FastAPI, and React, guiding engineers through complex projects.

You will shape end-to-end AI pipelines, including LLMs, RAG, OCR, and multi-agent systems, while mentoring the team and ensuring scalable, production-grade delivery.

Qualifications

• 8–10 years of professional software engineering experience.
• 3–4+ years building and deploying AI/ML, OCR, and Generative AI solutions in production.
• Strong experience with Generative AI, LLMs, and agentic frameworks.
• Proficiency in Python and asynchronous frameworks (FastAPI, AsyncIO).
• Cloud and DevOps familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of AI, backend, and full-stack engineers; allocate tasks and sprint priorities.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure quality, security, and performance across AI and frontend code.
• Design end-to-end architectures for AI solutions integrating frontend, backend, and models.
• Mentor team on modern software practices, LLM engineering, and agentic design patterns.
• Architect and optimize LLM-powered apps and multi-agent workflows.
• Design RAG and OCR pipelines to extract data from unstructured sources.
• Build robust microservices and RESTful APIs with Python and FastAPI.
• Collaborate on React interfaces for dashboards and chat interfaces.
• Oversee MLOps, vector DBs, and cloud deployment (Azure/AWS).

Skills

Technical leadership

Team management

Code reviews

Architecture design

LLM engineering

RAG pipelines

OCR techniques

Python

FastAPI

AsyncIO

MLOps

Vector databases

Cloud (Azure/AWS)

Docker/Kubernetes

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

AutoGen

CrewAI

Pinecone

Qdrant

Chroma

PGVector

Tesseract

PaddleOCR

Job description

Straive is a global leader in data analytics and AI operationalization, helping enterprises embed advanced AI and data capabilities into core business workflows to deliver measurable business outcomes and ROI. With a workforce of ~20,000 professionals serving 350+ clients across 30+ markets, Straive combines technical scale with deep domain expertise. A key differentiator is its network of over 6,000 subject matter experts who specialize in managing and enriching complex, unstructured data enabling organizations to build AI systems grounded in accuracy, context, and business relevance. The company continues to earn recognition from leading industry analysts and was recently named a Leader in AIM’s 2026 Generative AI and Data Engineering PeMa Quadrants. Backed by EQT a purpose-driven global investment organization which was ranked among the world’s leading private equity firms by PEI in 2025 Straive is positioned as a high-value alternative to traditional IT services providers, combining domain-led intelligence with AI execution at scale.

Job Description

We are seeking a highly technical, hands-on Senior AI/ML Tech Lead to drive the design, development, and deployment of cutting-edge Generative AI applications. In this dual-impact role, you will act as a primary individual contributor architecting core AI engines while simultaneously leading a team of engineers through task allocation, code reviews, and technical mentorship. The ideal candidate bridges the gap between state-of-the-art AI research (LLMs, Agentic frameworks, Advanced RAG, OCR) and production-grade full-stack engineering (Python, FastAPI, React).

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Team Management (40%)

• Technical Oversight: Lead a team of AI, backend, and full-stack engineers; allocate tasks, establish sprint priorities, and ensure timely delivery.
• Code Quality & Reviews: Conduct rigorous code reviews to maintain high engineering standards, security, performance, and scalability across AI and full-stack codebases.
• Architecture & Governance: Design end-to-end system architectures for AI solutions, ensuring seamless integration between frontend interfaces, backend APIs, and AI models.
• Mentorship: Guide and upskill team members on modern software practices, LLM engineering, and agentic design patterns.
• Generative AI & Agentic Systems: Architect, build, and optimize LLM-powered applications, multi-agent workflows (e.g., CrewAI, AutoGen, LangGraph), and autonomous AI agents.
• RAG & OCR Pipelines: Design and deploy advanced RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures and document processing pipelines utilizing OCR techniques (e.g., LayoutLM, PaddleOCR, Tesseract, Vision LLMs) to extract structured data from unstructured sources.
• Backend Systems: Build robust, asynchronous, high-throughput microservices and RESTful APIs using Python and FastAPI.
• Frontend Integration: Collaborate on or build modern web interfaces using React (e.g., Control Towers, operations dashboards, interactive chat interfaces).
• MLOps & Vector DBs: Oversee model deployment, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, vector database integration (Pinecone, Qdrant, Chroma, PGVector), and cloud infrastructure setup (Azure/AWS).

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Overall Experience: 8 to 10 years of professional software engineering experience.
• AI/ML Domain Experience: 3 to 4+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience building and deploying AI/ML, OCR, and Generative AI solutions in production.
• Core Technical Stack:
  • Generative AI & LLMs: Extensive experience with commercial and open-source LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Llama), Agentic frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI), and LLM evaluation frameworks (LangSmith, TruLens, Ragas).
  • RAG & Unstructured Data: Strong knowledge of hybrid search, re-ranking, chunking strategies, vector databases, and document intelligence workflows.
  • OCR & Vision Techniques: Hands-on experience with OCR engines (Tesseract, PaddleOCR, Azure Document Intelligence) and Multi-Modal/Vision LLMs for document extraction.
  • Backend: Deep expertise in Python and asynchronous frameworks (FastAPI, AsyncIO).
  • Cloud & DevOps: Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (Azure / AWS), Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.

Preferred / Good-to-Have Skills

• Experience with cloud-native data platforms (e.g., Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Azure SQL).
• Familiarity with cost optimization and latency reduction techniques for LLM inference (caching, semantic routing, model quantization).
• Prior experience in client-facing technical leadership or agile consulting environments.