Lead, Digital Public Infrastructure, ICDIA Programme

Position: Lead, Digital Public Infrastructure, ICDIA Programme

Team: AI and Digital Transformation

Level and grade: L6 Associate Director

Position type: Full time, permanent

Location: Bengaluru, India. Remote only in rare exceptions.

Reports to: Team Lead, ICDIA Programme

Travel: 25 percent, primarily domestic

Mandate: Technical sign-off on transferability and digital public goods readiness

About Us

APLYD helps governments, multilateral institutions, development finance institutions and foundations use AI in public systems. Most public-sector AI stops at the pilot. Our work is getting it into everyday service delivery and keeping it running once we leave.

Athena Infonomics has done this work for years. In 2026 we set it up as its own company. We cover strategy and readiness, field data and last-mile reach, design and build, evaluation and audit, and scale and production.

440+ engagements · 240+ global clients · 85+ specialists · 7 countries · 5 continents

The Role

You own the supply side. India has around thirty solutions on the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry by origin country, stewarded largely by foundations, academic institutions and multilateral bodies. There is significant headroom for government-stewarded solutions, and that is where ICDIA has a role to play.

Getting there is technical work rather than administrative work. Public digital systems everywhere are built, procured and licensed for domestic delivery first, and preparing them for open stewardship takes deliberate engineering and licensing effort. You run the pipeline that takes a candidate solution from a transferability judgement, through strengthening against the digital public goods standard, to registration and sustained stewardship.

Core Job Responsibilities

• Judge transferability. Apply the framework across India's platform portfolio. Separate the transferable core, meaning the protocol, reference application, data schema and API specification, from India-specific dependencies such as Aadhaar-linked authentication, and classify each dependency as removable, substitutable or structural.
• Resolve licensing and ownership. Who owns the code, the data and the dependent components, whether current licensing permits open release, and the negotiation where rights are shared with a private vendor.
• Run the strengthening pipeline. Open licensing across code, data and any model components. An unambiguous stewardship record with a single accountable steward. Abstraction of India-specific dependencies behind clean interfaces, with at least one working configuration on substitutable infrastructure.
• Evidence practice rather than intent. Privacy, security and do-no-harm are evidenced through demonstrable practice: data minimisation, consent, retention and deletion, access controls and governance. The 2025 revisions to the standard raised the bar on these indicators.
• Take solutions through registration. Eligibility self-assessment before formal submission, nomination, staged review, and reviewer queries answered from assembled evidence. Then prepare stewards for the ongoing obligations of recognition.
• Set technical scope for the expert bench. You define what sector experts are asked to assess and you quality-assure what comes back.
• Hold the owner relationships with the non-profits, academic institutions and private firms who steward candidate solutions, and with the government technology owners you work alongside.

Qualifications and Competencies

• Eight to twelve or more years in software architecture, platform engineering or technical advisory on public digital systems.
• You know the Digital Public Goods Standard properly, not as a checklist but as a set of judgements, including how the 2025 revisions changed the privacy, security and AI indicators.
• You can read a codebase and a licence file and form an independent view you can explain and stand behind.
• Practical experience of open-source licensing, relicensing negotiation and open governance models.
• You have worked with government technology owners on open-sourcing, including where rights are shared with a private vendor.
• You can explain an engineering constraint to a non-technical government audience without losing the substance of it.
• Based in Bengaluru, with willingness to travel 25 percent.

Also useful, though we will not screen on it

• Prior contribution to a solution that achieved digital public goods recognition.
• Familiarity with India Stack components and their institutional dependencies.
• Experience of a deployment of Indian-origin digital infrastructure outside India.
• Time inside a digital mission or a government technology programme.

Additional Requirements

• This position requires successful completion of a reference check and employment verification.
• The successful candidate must not be subject to employment restrictions from a former employer, such as a non-compete, that would prevent performance of the responsibilities described.
• Candidates must declare any current or recent engagement with a government, multilateral or development finance institution that could present a conflict of interest.

APLYD’s Work Culture

At APLYD, we function in an outcomes-based work environment with flexible hours and a high level of autonomy. Professional development and thought leadership are key elements of our business model: we support our team members’ professional growth through on-the-job training, and we encourage the cultivation of our colleagues’ personal brands through participation in panels, events, publications, and other thought-leadership opportunities. We embrace a transparent, open work environment with meaningful leadership pathways for those with inventive ideas and initiatives.

APLYD is an Equal Opportunities Employer

APLYD, part of the Athena Infonomics group, is an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.

AI Proficiency and Responsible Use

Proficiency in the responsible and sophisticated use of AI is a mandatory requirement for all roles, across all levels and functions at APLYD and Athena Infonomics.

APLYD - from Athena Infonomics