SquareShift - Engineering Manager

SquareShift; Chennai District; Hybrid; INR 4,500,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

SquareShift is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a multi-pod team across cloud, data, and AI/ML practices in Chennai. You will own delivery quality, engineering health, and people growth across two to four client engagements, balancing client needs with engineer development.

You will mentor senior engineers, drive architecture decisions for data platforms, Looker migrations, and AI product initiatives, and ensure production readiness while reporting to the Director of Engineering.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building and operating production software.
• At least 3 years managing engineers (IC and/or management).
• Hands-on depth in two of: GCP (BigQuery, Cloud Run, GKE), Looker/LookML, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, data engineering, or AI/ML systems.
• Working fluency with container deployment on GCP Kubernetes (GKE) and serverless patterns.
• Track record of shipping client engagements end-to-end with production go-lives.

Responsibilities

• Lead 15-25 engineers across 2-4 concurrent engagements.
• Run weekly delivery reviews using cockpit metrics (velocity, MTTR, on-call load).
• Own SOW-to-go-live execution including milestone plans and stakeholder communication.
• Partner with Pre-Sales on technical scoping for deals sizing and staffing.
• Set and enforce engineering bar across pods (code reviews, testing, observability).
• Sign off on architecture decisions for data platforms, Looker/LookML models, and AI deployments.
• Drive root-cause analysis for incidents and feed learnings into playbooks.
• Direct people management for 8-12 senior engineers and tech leads; conduct 1:1s and promotions.
• Hire and ramp senior engineers; lead interview processes.
• Champion engineering culture through internal talks and AI playbooks.

Skills

GCP BigQuery

Looker/LookML

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Data engineering

AI/ML systems

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud Run

Looker

Vertex AI

Job description

SQUARESHIFT Manager

Location: Chennai, India (Hybrid) | Team : Engineering & Delivery | Reports to : Director of Engineering.

About SquareShift

SquareShift is a specialized consulting firm focused on cloud modernization, data engineering, AI/ML, and observability. We are a Google Cloud Premier Partner, a Looker Delivery-Verified Partner, and an Elastic Professional Services partner combining deep platform expertise with senior-led delivery for ISVs, SaaS companies, and enterprises across the US and India. We are not a staffing shop. We are a boutique that builds production data platforms, agentic AI products, and observability systems that go live and stay live. Our engineers work directly with client architects and CTOs.

The Role

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a multi-pod team of senior engineers across our cloud, data, and AI/ML practices. You will own delivery quality, engineering health, and people growth across two to four concurrent client engagements typically a mix of GCP data platform builds, Looker/BI migrations, Elasticsearch/observability work, and our internal agentic AI products (Conversational BI, AIResolveX, Agentic QA). This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will not write production code every day, but you will read PRs, sit in architecture reviews, unblock debugging sessions, and coach senior engineers through hard technical decisions. You are the person clients escape to when something is on fire, and the person engineers go to when they need air cover.

What You Will Own

• Lead 15-25 engineers across 2-4 concurrent engagements, balancing client commitments with engineer growth and bench utilization.
• Run weekly delivery reviews using our engineering cockpit metrics across Delivery, Quality, and Health pillars (velocity, escape rate, on‑call load, MTTR, engagement scores).
• Own SOW‑to‑go‑live execution: scoping inputs, milestone plans, risk registers, change orders, and stakeholder communication with client engineering leadership.
• Partner with Pre‑Sales on technical scoping for prospective deals sizing, staffing models, and risk flags before SOWs go out.
• Set and enforce the engineering bar across pods: code review standards, testing coverage, observability defaults, and production readiness checklists.
• Sign off on architecture decisions for net‑new builds and migrations (BigQuery data platforms, Looker/LookML semantic models, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch clusters, Vertex AI agent deployments).
• Drive root‑cause analysis for client incidents and internal escapes; ensure learnings flow back into our playbooks and accelerators (T2L, M2L, P2L, C2L).
• Direct people management for 8-12 senior engineers and tech leads: 1:1s, KRAs, performance calibration, promotion cases, and growth planning.
• Hire and ramp senior engineers; own the technical bar in interviews and the first‑90‑days experience.
• Champion engineering culture: internal tech talks, RocketOne AI bootcamps, Claude Code adoption, and the AI Playbook rollout across the org.

What You Need To Have

• 8+ years building and operating production software, with at least 3 years managing engineers (mix of IC and management is fine, but you must have managed).
• Hands‑on technical depth in at least two of: Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Cloud Run, GKE/Kubernetes, Vertex AI), Looker/LookML, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, modern data engineering (Airflow/Dataflow/dbt), or production AI/ML systems.
• Working fluency with container and deployment patterns on GCP Kubernetes (GKE), Cloud Run, and serverless and the judgement to push back when a team picks the wrong one.
• Track record of shipping client engagements end‑to‑end you have signed off on production go‑lives and owned post‑launch outcomes, not just sprint outputs.
• Strong written communication: you can write a clean status update, a defensible architecture rationale, and a hard email to a client when scope is creeping.
• Comfortable in ambiguity: consulting work changes weekly you should be energised, not destabilised, by replanning.

Bonus Points For

• Direct experience with agentic AI patterns: tool‑use, RAG, multi‑agent orchestration, evaluation frameworks, or building on Anthropic / Google ADK / OpenRouter.
• Background in BI migrations (Tableau, MicroStrategy, Cognos, or Power BI to Looker).
• Observability or SIEM delivery experience on the Elastic Stack.
• Prior consulting or services‑firm experience you understand utilisation, T&M vs fixed‑bid economics, and the texture of client politics.

Why This Role Is Worth Your Time

• Real scope: you will lead delivery across multiple Fortune 500 and growth‑stage clients in parallel not a single product team.
• Senior peers: our engineers are senior by default; you are managing experts, not ramping juniors.
• AI is not a side project here: our internal product portfolio (Conversational BI, AIResolveX, Agentic QA) ships to real users, and you will help shape it.
• Direct line to the Director of Engineering and the founders: decisions move in days, not quarters.