Technical Lead - Data and AI

River; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,800,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Job summary

River is a design company crafting multi-utility products, headquartered in Bengaluru with a 1000+ team. The Lead - Data Engineering and AI will drive the technology vision for real-time telemetry, predictive models, and scalable data platforms to power next-gen scooter and mobility features.

You will mentor a diverse, hybrid team, partner with engineering, manufacturing, and sales, and deliver AI-enabled capabilities from data pipelines to deployed models on edge devices.

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years of experience across Data Engineering and Data Science.
• 2–3 years leading technical teams or multi-disciplinary data projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead the data engineering and data science agenda for River’s multi-utility product stack.
• Build and mentor a hybrid team of data engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers from scratch.
• Define and execute a multi-year technical roadmap bridging data infrastructure with AI capabilities.
• Partner with Vehicle Engineering, Software, and Manufacturing to identify high-impact AI/data use cases.
• Architect low-latency IoT telemetry pipelines from vehicle sensors and apps.
• Design and scale a unified Lakehouse/Warehouse (Databricks/Snowflake) for streaming and enterprise data.
• Develop automated ETL/ELT workflows with Airflow, dbt, and PySpark.
• Deploy ML models in production with MLOps (MLflow/Kubeflow) monitoring drift and performance.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data Engineering

Data Science

ML

Kafka

Spark

Airflow

dbt

Geospatial data

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

MLflow

Kubeflow

Job description

River is a design company building multi-utility products. Our flagship product River Indie #SUVofScooters, is designed to help you get things done. Engineered to be a dependable ally on your road to success.

We’re a 1000+ team headquartered in Bengaluru – backed by marquee international investors, with mobility-focused funds linked to Yamaha Motors, Al-Futtaim Automotive Group, Toyota VC, Trucks Venture Capital, Mitsui & Co. Ltd, Marubeni Ventures Inc., Lowercarbon Capital, and Maniv Mobility.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership and 0-to-1 Strategy
• Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and manage a hybrid team of data engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers from scratch
• Unified Roadmap: Define and execute a multi-year technical vision that bridges scalable data infrastructure with advanced AI capabilities
• Cross-Functional Impact: Partner with Vehicle Engineering, Software, Manufacturing, and Sales to identify high-impact AI/Data use cases (e.g., supply chain forecasting, smart scooter features)
• IoT Telemetry Pipelines: Architect low-latency, high-throughput streaming pipelines to ingest real-time data from vehicle sensors (VCU, BMS), mobile apps, and charging infrastructure using MQTT, Apache Kafka, or AWS Kinesis
• Modern Data Stack: Design and scale a unified Lakehouse/Warehouse (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake) to handle both streaming telemetry and complex enterprise data (ERP, CRM, MES)
• Data Pipelines: Build automated, resilient ETL/ELT workflows using tools like Apache Airflow, dbt, and PySpark to ensure high data quality and governance
• Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
• Predictive Modeling: Develop and deploy ML models specific to the EV ecosystem—such as predictive maintenance, Battery State of Health (SoH) degradation forecasting, and dynamic Range/State of Charge (SoC) estimation
• Rider Intelligence: Build algorithms to analyze rider behavior, detect anomalies (e.g., accident or fall detection), and personalize the app/scooter experience
• MLOps & Deployment: Establish the MLOps infrastructure (e.g., MLflow, Kubeflow) to train, deploy, monitor, and retrain models seamlessly in production—both in the cloud and on edge devices (vehicle ECUs)

Ideal Candidate

• Experience: 8–12+ years of comprehensive experience across Data Engineering and Data Science, with at least 2–3 years leading technical teams or complex, multi-disciplinary data projects
• Domain Expertise: Prior experience in Automotive, EV, Telematics, or IoT is highly preferred. You must be comfortable dealing with high-frequency time-series data and geospatial (GPS) data
• Languages: Expert-level proficiency in Python and SQL
• Data Engineering: Deep practical experience with stream processing (Kafka, Spark Streaming, Flink), cloud data warehouses, and orchestration (Airflow, dbt)
• AI/ML Frameworks: Strong hands-on experience with machine learning libraries (Scikit-learn, XGBoost, Pandas) and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or TensorFlow)
• MLOps: Proven track record of deploying machine learning models into live production environments and monitoring model drift
• Player-Coach Mentality: You possess the strategic vision to design enterprise architecture, but you still love writing production-grade code, debugging PySpark jobs, and tuning neural networks