Vice President - Technology & AI

VP - Technology & AI

Location: Mumbai

Experience: 10+ years

Industry: E-commerce / Marketplace / Digital Commerce preferred

Build. Automate. Own. Scale.

The Opportunity

Ergode builds and scales digital-first businesses across global marketplaces. We have made a clear strategic choice: Technology, Artificial Intelligence and automation will sit at the core of how we scale revenue, improve margins and increase productivity. We are looking for a hands-on Technology & AI leader who can convert business problems into working, adopted systems - quickly.

This is not a traditional IT leadership role. You will own the intersection of business, engineering, AI, automation, data, integrations, infrastructure and security. You will work directly with the CEO and business leaders to identify high-impact problems, decide what should be built internally versus externally, and ensure solutions move from idea - production - adoption - measurable business outcome.

Some of our systems need modernization. Some need stronger ownership and architecture. Others need to be replaced or rebuilt. We would rather be transparent about that upfront. We need someone who enjoys that challenge.

What you will own

- Technology Execution & Delivery: Create an execution culture where technology commitments translate into shipped outcomes. Run technology on clear weekly priorities with an owner, deadline and measurable outcome for every major initiative. Track commitments through completion - not merely development activity. Identify blockers early and make fast build/buy/outsource decisions. Hold internal teams and external partners accountable for scope, timelines, quality and business outcomes. Build clear visibility from: Business Requirement - Development - Production - Adoption - Business Impact. Develop engineers and technology managers into stronger owners and future leaders.

- Business-First Technology Strategy: Technology exists to improve business outcomes. Deeply understand how Ergode makes money across marketplaces, brands and channels: fees, margins, inventory, pricing, advertising, catalogue operations, fulfilment and customer experience. Own the Technology & AI roadmap based on impact on: revenue, gross margin, productivity, operating cost, speed and customer/vendor experience. Challenge processes that should be eliminated or simplified before automating them. Own technology economics including cloud, AI/token usage, software licences, development and outsourcing. Report technology performance to leadership in business outcomes rather than project activity.

- AI, Agents & Intelligent Automation: AI is not an innovation project at Ergode. It is becoming part of how the company operates. Identify high-volume and high-value manual work suitable for AI or automation. Build and deploy AI agents and GenAI workflows into real production environments. Develop reusable AI architecture rather than disconnected experiments. Integrate AI into areas including catalogue and content, marketplace listings, pricing, inventory, customer support, sales, finance, HR, and reporting and decision support. Build with LLM APIs, RAG, agentic workflows, orchestration frameworks and workflow automation. Measure every major automation against a before/after baseline: hours/FTE capacity saved, cycle-time reduction, cost reduction, quality improvement, revenue/margin impact and user adoption. Kill pilots that do not produce value and scale the ones that do. Ensure business teams actually adopt what Technology builds.

- E-commerce Platforms & Marketplace Technology: Our technology must support a complex global marketplace operation. You will own and strengthen: Marketplace integrations including Amazon SP-API, Walmart, eBay and other channels. Catalogue and listing infrastructure. Pricing and quantity synchronization. Order processing. Inventory and warehouse integrations. Returns, refunds and reconciliation workflows. Marketplace reporting and operational intelligence. API reliability and monitoring. The goal is not simply integration. The goal is reliable commerce at scale.

- Product & Platform Ownership: Own Ergode's core internal technology platforms and make them dependable business systems: evaluating existing architecture, identifying technical debt, establishing clear module ownership, improving reliability and usability, prioritising development based on business value, and driving adoption after launch. Technology is not complete when code is deployed. A feature is complete when the business can reliably use it and the expected outcome is visible.

- Data Foundation & Decision Intelligence: AI is only as strong as the underlying data. Build reliable data flows across business systems. Establish clear sources of truth for critical business information. Reduce duplicate datasets and manual reconciliation. Improve data quality and ownership. Enable dashboards and AI systems to consume trustworthy business data. Build APIs and integration layers that allow new agents and applications to be deployed quickly.

- Architecture, Cloud & Engineering Quality: You should be technically strong enough to challenge architecture and engineering decisions yourself. Review architecture for scalability, reliability, maintainability, security and cost. Establish coding, testing, documentation and deployment standards. Strengthen CI/CD and monitoring. Review estimates rather than blindly accepting them. Prototype when speed requires it. Make pragmatic technology choices rather than over-engineering. We expect a leader who can move comfortably between a CEO conversation about ROI and an engineering conversation about architecture.

- Security, Reliability & AI Governance: Own reliability and security across cloud and infrastructure reliability, monitoring and uptime, incident management, root-cause analysis, backups and disaster recovery, identity and access management, SSO, endpoint/device security and data protection. You will also establish practical AI governance covering which company information can be shared with which AI systems, permissions available to AI agents, human review requirements for critical decisions, auditability, and acceptable AI use. Ensure compliance with DPDP and relevant international privacy/security requirements.

- Build vs Buy vs Outsource: We do not believe everything must be built internally. We do believe Ergode must own the outcome. You will decide when to: BUILD - when capability creates strategic advantage. BUY - when a reliable product already solves the problem economically. OUTSOURCE - when an external specialist can deliver faster. For outsourced work, you will own requirements, architecture, vendor selection, commercial evaluation, milestones, SLAs, quality, security, source code, documentation and handover. No critical Ergode technology should become permanently dependent on one vendor or individual.

What success looks like

Within the first 6 - 12 months:

- Execution: Major technology initiatives have clear owners, deadlines and outcomes. Delivery predictability improves materially. Chronic technology bottlenecks reduce.

- AI & Automation: Multiple AI agents/workflows are operating in production. Automation impact is quantified monthly. Manual workload is measurably reduced in targeted processes. Business adoption is visible rather than assumed.

- Core Platforms: Critical marketplace and internal systems become more reliable. Technical ownership and documentation improve. Important business workflows no longer depend on fragile manual processes.

- Business Partnership: Business leaders increasingly bring problems to Technology because they expect working solutions, not project discussions.

Who we are looking for

Must-Haves:

- 10+ years of meaningful technology experience.

- 5+ years leading engineering/technology teams.

- Evidence of personally owning major technology delivery.

- AI/automation systems deployed into production with measurable impact.

- Practical experience with LLM APIs, RAG, AI agents/agentic workflows, Python, and workflow automation platforms such as n8n/Make or equivalent.

- Cloud experience across AWS, Azure or GCP.

- DevOps, deployment and monitoring understanding.

- Strong software engineering, architecture, API and integration depth, with the ability to evaluate code/design decisions and engineering estimates.

- Experience managing external technology partners.

- Experience owning meaningful technology budgets.

- Strong business and commercial orientation.

Strongly Preferred:

- Experience in one or more of: E-commerce, Marketplaces, Retail technology, D2C, SaaS/platform businesses, ERP/OMS/WMS, Amazon SP-API or other marketplace integrations, high-volume order/catalogue/inventory systems, AI-first enterprise transformation.

Who will not fit this role

- This role is probably not for you if: Your experience is predominantly IT infrastructure/helpdesk. Your leadership style is primarily delegation without technical depth. Your AI experience consists mainly of courses, certifications or prototypes. You measure success by projects delivered rather than business outcomes achieved. You require large teams before you can execute. You prefer lengthy planning cycles over shipping, learning and improving. You cannot challenge engineers, vendors and business leaders when necessary.

Skills

IT Strategy, AI Transformation, Digital Transformation, IT Product Management, Artificial Intelligence, CTO