Director Engineering, RLE

About the role

Handshake AI is seeking a Director of Engineering to establish and lead our new engineering hub in Bengaluru, India. You will be responsible for building teams from the ground up to support Reinforcement Learning Environments, Forward Deployed Engineering, and international growth initiatives. This role requires a leader capable of aligning local operations with our US-based engineering organization to drive our AI data infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Recruit, mentor, and manage a high-performing engineering organization in India.
• Collaborate with US-based leadership in Research, Product, and Operations to execute a unified global roadmap.
• Oversee the development of platforms for Reinforcement Learning Environments and Forward Deployed Engineering.
• Establish internal engineering practices, technical standards, and a culture of accountability.
• Manage technical execution across multiple teams while ensuring software quality and system reliability.
• Define the operating model for the India office to ensure effective cross-border collaboration.

Requirements

• Proven history of building engineering teams or organizations from scratch in zero-to-one environments.
• Demonstrated success in hiring, developing, and retaining top-tier engineering talent.
• Technical background in leading teams focused on distributed systems, platform infrastructure, or large-scale software products.
• Experience managing or partnering with globally distributed teams, specifically between India and the US.
• Ability to maintain high execution speed and clarity while navigating ambiguous, fast-paced business requirements.
• Strong communication skills to align cross-functional stakeholders across Engineering, Product, and Research.

Nice to have

• Background in reinforcement learning infrastructure, simulation systems, or AI evaluation platforms.
• Experience supporting applied machine learning or AI research teams.
• History of building developer platforms or customer-facing distributed systems.
• Familiarity with modern infrastructure stacks including AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, and Docker.
• Experience operating within a hypergrowth startup environment.

Skills & tools

• Distributed systems architecture
• Engineering management and organizational design
• AI and machine learning infrastructure
• Cross-functional leadership
• AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, and API development

Practical notes

• Compensation includes a generous equity grant vested over 4 years.
• Performance bonus structure ranges from 10% to 100% of base salary.
• Includes a housing bonus of 1.3 Lakhs distributed over the first year.
• Benefits package covers medical insurance and food credits for every in-office day.