Engineering Lead in India

About Ema Ema is building the world’s leading Agentic AI platform to transform enterprise productivity. We enable organizations to delegate repetitive tasks to Ema, the Universal AI Employee, delivering 10x gains in workforce efficiency, across functions. Founded by former executives from Google, Coinbase, Flipkart, and Okta, our team includes engineers from premier tech companies and graduates of Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, CMU, and IITs. We are backed by industry leading investors including Accel, Naspers/Prosus, Section32, and angels like Sheryl Sandberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Headquartered in Silicon Valley and with offices in London, Bangalore and Vancouver, Ema is at the frontier of what Agentic AI can do in production — we ship real systems that run real business processes at scale. The Role We are looking for an Engineering Leader to manage and scale multiple product lines in the Voice, BPO, and Workforce Management space. This is a high-impact leadership role that sits at the intersection of real-time voice systems, operations research, and data-intensive platform engineering. You will report directly to the Head of Engineering and own the engineering organization that builds the infrastructure powering Ema’s Voice AI Employees, Agent QA, auto-learning pipelines, rich analytics, and workforce optimization capabilities — all operating as scalable, multi-tenant systems deployed across global geographies. You will collaborate with Product, ML/AI, and Go-to-Market teams to translate customer needs into production systems that handle high volumes of voice data, deliver real-time insights, and continuously improve through automated learning loops. As the owner of multiple product lines, you will balance roadmap priorities across Voice, BPO operations, and WFM (work force management) — ensuring each product evolves cohesively while meeting distinct customer needs. What You Will Do Scalable Multi-Tenant Systems Architect and build multi-tenant systems that serve enterprise customers across geographies with strict data residency, isolation, and compliance requirements. Design high-throughput ingestion systems capable of processing large volumes of voice data, call metadata, and operational telemetry in near real-time. Make foundational architectural decisions on data stores, stream processing, and storage tiers — balancing query performance, cost, and operational simplicity. Champion SOLID principles, clean architecture, and engineering rigor across all codebases — ensuring systems are testable, extensible, and maintainable at scale. Team Building & Engineering Culture Recruit, hire, and develop senior engineers across a multi-disciplinary function spanning voice engineering, backend systems, data engineering, and applied operations research. Establish engineering standards, code review culture, and a strong bias toward shipping — with equal commitment to system reliability and customer experience. Coach and grow senior/staff engineers into technical leaders; manage engineering managers as the organization scales. Drive cross-functional alignment with Product, ML/AI, and Go-to-Market teams to ensure the platform evolves in lockstep with customer needs and market feedback. Voice Platform & Agent QA Own the end-to-end engineering for Ema’s AgentQA capabilities — real-time voice pipelines, telephony integrations, and voice-to-action workflows. Build and scale the Agent QA platform: automated call scoring, compliance monitoring, sentiment analysis, and coaching feedback loops. Design auto-learning systems that continuously improve voice agents from production interactions — closed-loop feedback, model retraining triggers, and quality regression detection. Deliver rich voice analytics: call volume trends, handle time distributions, first-call resolution metrics, agent performance dashboards, and anomaly detection. Build scalable voice pipeline across geographies – keeping in mind PII, security and compliance requirements. Workforce Management & Operations Research Build WFM capabilities including demand forecasting, shift scheduling, real-time adherence monitoring, and capacity planning — applying operations research techniques to optimize workforce utilization. Design and implement optimization algorithms for headcount modeling, skill-based routing, and workload balancing across multi-site, multi-timezone contact center operations. Partner with ML/AI teams to integrate predictive models for call volume forecasting, attrition risk, and staffing efficiency. What We Look For Required 12+ years of software engineering experience, with 4+ years leading engineering teams of 8+ engineers at high-growth startups or top-tier tech companies. Deep expertise in building real-time, data-intensive systems. Strong foundation in data stores and storage systems: relational databases, time-series stores, columnar analytics engines, and caching layers — with the judgment to choose the right tool for the workload. Experience building quality software using AI-driven tools and workflows. Track record of taking products from 0→1 and iterating rapidly based on customer feedback. Hands-on proficiency with SOLID principles, clean architecture, and design patterns — you write and review production code and lead by example on system design. Experience building scalable multi-tenant SaaS platforms with data isolation, geo-distributed deployments, and compliance requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA). Track record of building ingestion systems for high volumes of load — event-driven architectures, stream processing (Kafka, Flink, or equivalent), and batch/real-time hybrid pipelines. Strong product sense: ability to deeply understand customer problems in contact center, voice, and workforce domains and translate them into clean technical solutions. Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain high-caliber engineers across multiple disciplines in competitive markets. Good to have Experience in voice/telephony systems: WebRTC, SIP, voice-over-IP infrastructure, or contact center platforms. Background in operations research or optimization: scheduling algorithms, linear/integer programming, constraint satisfaction, or demand forecasting models. Experience building analytics platforms: OLAP systems, real-time dashboards, metric computation engines, or BI infrastructure. Prior work on auto-learning or continuous improvement systems: feedback loops from production data, automated retraining pipelines, or quality monitoring systems. Experience with AI/ML-powered products in enterprise settings — agentic automation, LLM orchestration, or AI-driven UX. Familiarity with WFM or contact center operations — staffing models, Erlang-based capacity planning, or real-time adherence systems. Why Ema Build at the intersection of Voice AI, operations research, and enterprise-scale systems — a rare combination of deeply technical challenges with direct customer impact. Shape the engineering foundation of a category-defining AI platform — your architectural decisions will power how the world’s largest enterprises run their voice and workforce operations. High-impact, high-visibility role with direct access to the Head of Engineering, co-founders, and enterprise customers. A team of exceptional engineers from Google, Meta, Microsoft Research, and top CS programs worldwide. Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the opportunity to build something that matters. Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for variable compensation, equity, and benefits. Ema Unlimited is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetics.

About ElevenLabs ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company transforming how we interact with technology. We launched in January 2023 with the first human-like AI voice model. Today, we serve millions of users and thousands of businesses - from fast-growing startups to large enterprises like Deutsche Telekom and Meta. Our investors are some of the world's most prominent, including Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Growth and Sequoia. We've raised $781M in funding and our last valuation was $11B - multiples of 11, always. We have expanded from voice into three main platforms: ElevenAgents enables businesses to deliver seamless and intelligent customer experiences, with the integrations, testing, monitoring, and reliability necessary to deploy voice and chat agents at scale. ElevenCreative empowers creators and marketers to generate and edit speech, music, image, and video across 70+ languages. ElevenAPI gives developers access to our leading AI audio foundational models. Everything we do is the result of the creativity and commitment of our team - builders doing the best work of their lives. We are researchers, engineers, and operators. IOI medalists and ex-founders. If you want to work hard and create lasting positive impact, we want to hear from you. How we work High-velocity: Rapid experimentation, lean autonomous teams, and minimal bureaucracy. Impact not job titles: We don’t have job titles. Instead, it’s about the impact you have. No task is above or beneath you. AI first: We use AI to move faster with higher-quality results. We do this across the whole company—from engineering to growth to operations. Excellence everywhere: Everything we do should match the quality of our AI models. Global team: We prioritize your talent, not your location. What we offer Innovative culture: You’ll be part of a generational opportunity to define the trajectory of AI, surrounded by a team pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Growth paths: Joining ElevenLabs means joining a dynamic team with countless opportunities to drive impact - beyond your immediate role and responsibilities. Learning & development : ElevenLabs proactively supports professional development through an annual discretionary stipend. Social travel : We also provide an annual discretionary stipend to meet up with colleagues each year, however you choose. Annual company offsite: Each year, we bring the entire team together in a new location - past offsites have included Croatia and Italy. Co-working : If you’re not located near one of our main hubs, we offer a monthly co-working stipend. About the role This is a hands-on technical role with lead responsibilities. You will join during a period of high growth for the IT team as the company expands its headcount, global footprint and opens new offices. You will work closely with the Security and Operations teams to keep our endpoints, offices, networks, and SaaS tools secure, while making sure people stay as productive as possible with the tools we have. You will lead the IT Engineering team, balancing hands-on technical work with mentoring, project planning, and hiring. Requirements Experience leading or mentoring an IT Engineering or Technical Operations team, including project planning and hiring. Strong hands-on background in IT Engineering, Technical Operations, or a DevOps-adjacent role, with an automation-first mindset and experience managing enterprise scale IT systems Strong knowledge of identity and access management technologies (SAML, SCIM, OIDC) with tools such as Okta and Google Workspace Expertise with Mobile Device Management tooling (e.g. Jamf, Kandji, Fleet) across a device fleet. Scripting skills (Python, Bash, or similar) with a proven track record of automating compliance checks, device configuration, and other IT security tasks. Experience managing office network equipment (e.g. Cisco Meraki, Ubiquiti), including office buildouts. Proven ability to maintain compliance with SOC 2 / ISO 27001 (or similar) standards, paired with a friendly, end-user-focused attitude. Prior experience in a high-growth or startup environment. Bonus Experience implement corporate security controls / previous security role experience Strong hands-on experience with VPNs, firewalls, and secure network environments, including modern practices such as Zero Trust networking. Experience with OSquery and Santa Terraform or other infrastructure as code experience. Open source contributions (e.g. a tool you built to automate something). What we offer At ElevenLabs, our biggest reward is shaping that future of voice technology. In addition, we offer: Stock options; we want you to have ownership in the company and share the successes that lie ahead. That’s why we offer early employees stock options as part of their compensation package. Remote-first; we look at who you are rather than where you live. Our core hours are 2pm to 6pm GMT. As long as you are able to cover them, we support your preferred location. Huge impact; you'll own substantial portions of our IT security infrastructure, you will have the opportunity to apply best practice security to a company growing in scale. Extraordinary team; we favor ambitious, smart people striving for outsized impact. You’ll work on the state of the art surrounded by people with extraordinary skills and positive attitudes. We offer competitive compensation and stock options. We are open to candidates of multiple senioritis. Given the broad range, we'll be happy to discuss specific salary details during our initial conversation. Annual company off-sites; the last ones were in Croatia, Portugal and Switzerland. This role is remote and can be executed globally. If you prefer, you can work from our offices in London, New York, and Warsaw. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or other legally protected statuses.