Senior Manager, AI Enablement Engineering

Overview

Lead the development and adoption of AI-enabled engineering capabilities across the product development lifecycle, combining hands-on technical leadership with guidance of a small team of highly technical professionals as a player-coach.

What you'll do

• Hire, evaluate, and supervise crew; provide guidance, coaching, and training to develop crew.
• Set performance standards, review performance, and make informed compensation decisions in accordance with applicable Human Resources policies and procedures.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for the design, development, prototyping, and implementation of AI-enabled engineering tools, components, plugins, interfaces, reusable skills, and development harnesses.
• Drive the application of AI across the full product development lifecycle, from idea and discovery through architecture, engineering, testing, implementation, production deployment, and continuous improvement.
• Lead as a player-coach by directing a small team of highly technical professionals toward the highest-value opportunities while remaining actively involved in solution design and building.
• Partner with product managers, engineering leaders, architects, and technology teams in India and the United States to co-build solutions and deploy AI-enabled tools and practices.
• Explore emerging developments in AI and software engineering, evaluate their relevance, and convert promising ideas into controlled experiments, working solutions, and reusable capabilities.
• Coach product and engineering teams on the effective adoption of AI tools, practices, and reusable components to improve development speed, quality, and outcomes.
• Provide technical oversight and promote sound architecture, engineering standards, risk awareness, controls, and responsible implementation of AI-enabled capabilities.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships across sites, departments, divisions, and internal and external partners to support enterprise adoption and delivery.
• Communicate technical direction, progress, decisions, risks, and outcomes clearly to technical teams, product partners, and senior leadership.
• Participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned.

What you'll need

• Minimum 10 years of experience in information technology, software engineering, architecture, or product development, with experience across the full product development lifecycle.
• Bachelor's degree (B.E./B.Tech) in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proven experience as a hands-on technical lead, solution architect, engineering architect, principal engineer, senior engineer, or equivalent technical leader.
• Practical proficiency with AI-native engineering tools and approaches.
• Demonstrated ability to contribute directly to technical design, system architecture, prototypes, code, integrations, or production-oriented solutions.
• Strong understanding of modern software architecture, system design, engineering practices, product delivery, implementation, and production operations.
• Experience leading or guiding a small, highly technical team while remaining actively involved in technical work.
• Ability to identify and apply emerging AI capabilities to build faster, better, and more effective products.
• Strong learning agility and curiosity, with a consistent focus on staying current in a rapidly evolving AI environment.
• Self-driven and execution-oriented approach, with the ability to take ideas from exploration through experimentation, implementation, and adoption.
• Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively across functions and geographies and to partner with product, engineering, architecture, and leadership teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with Claude Code or comparable AI coding assistants, including plugins, integrations, interfaces, reusable skills, or related development ecosystems.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated enterprise environment.

Details

• Based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard India.
• Hybrid working model for most employees.
• Only qualified external applicants will be considered.
• Profiles focused primarily on project or program management, Agile coaching, Scrum leadership, or long-term people management without recent technical contribution may not align with the role.