{"id":2920144,"url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development","title":"Director of Research & Development","company":{"id":1303,"name":"Walker Digital Table Systems","domain":"wdtablesystems.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/walker-digital-table-systems","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":null,"truth_index":null},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Gurgaon, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":55000,"max_usd":112000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":50},"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Edge AI","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Sensor Fusion","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-20T11:35:00Z","employer_posted_date":null,"last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T11:35:00Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":null,"days_open":12,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":12},"description":"We are seeking a technically strong, commercially aware Director of R& D to lead our multidisciplinary research and development team across software, hardware, firmware, computer vision, applied AI, prototyping, and testing. Based in India and reporting directly to the CTO, you will turn emerging technologies and complex business problems into validated capabilities for future products and platforms.\n\nYou will combine technical judgment with people leadership: shaping the innovation portfolio, challenging assumptions, guiding experiments, and building integrated prototypes and developing the team. You will lead all disciplines within R& D and coordinate contributions from global specialists, working closely with Product, Architecture, Software Engineering, Hardware Engineering, Quality, and Operations. Core mandate: Discover, prove, and de-risk new technology, then enable an agreed transition into product engineering.\n\nThe core responsibilities for the job include the following:\n\nShape the innovation portfolio: \nTranslate the CTO's technology direction into a focused R& D roadmap.\nMaintain a common backlog of customer-led opportunities and technology-led ideas, prioritized with the CTO and product leadership.\nIdentify new possibilities proactively rather than waiting only for product requirements.\nDefine each initiative's hypothesis, intended value, resource ceiling, success measures, review date, and stop criteria; recommend when to continue, redirect, partner, or stop.\n\nLead the entire multidisciplinary R& D team: \nBuild, mentor, and manage engineers, researchers, technical leads, and test specialists across software, hardware, firmware, and computer vision.\nEstablish clear ownership, development plans, and performance expectations.\nCreate integrated project teams rather than disconnected discipline silos, and resolve cross-team dependencies.\nWork effectively with global colleagues while developing strong technical leadership and execution capability in India.\n\nProvide hands-on technical and systems leadership: \nLead architecture discussions, design reviews, experiments, and difficult root-cause investigations.\nChallenge assumptions across sensing, electronics, firmware, algorithms, applications, and system behavior.\nGuide trade-offs involving accuracy, latency, compute, power, cost, reliability, and integration.\nStay close enough to the engineering evidence to distinguish a credible result from a promising demonstration, while empowering specialists to own detailed implementation.\n\nMove concepts into validated prototypes and controlled pilots: \nOwn progression from feasibility to integrated prototypes and approved trials.\nAgree on acceptance criteria and the receiving engineering owner early.\nDeliver reproducible builds, source code, firmware, relevant hardware designs and bills of materials, model and dataset records, test evidence, and documented limitations.\nSupport productization through an accepted handover to the responsible Engineering and HWE teams; do not treat a demonstration as a production release.\n\nMake testing and research evidence central: \nEmbed testing from the first experiment, with repeatable benchmarks, instrumentation, and traceable results.\nDevelop simulation, automated testing, and hardware-in-the-loop capability.\nValidate whole-system performance under realistic operating conditions, including lighting changes, occlusion, chip configurations, device variation, and failure scenarios.\nAddress security, privacy, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, and certification considerations early, in partnership with the relevant specialists.\n\nScout emerging technology and protect intellectual property: \nEvaluate relevant advances in RFID, sensing, embedded computing, computer vision, AI, communications, and human-machine interaction.\nBuild purposeful relationships with universities, technology partners, suppliers, and research organizations.\nAssess build-versus-buy-versus-partner options against measurable value, feasibility, and lifecycle cost.\nCapture inventions and technical knowledge, supporting patent evaluation, confidentiality, and third-party IP review with the appropriate experts.\n\nRun an accountable, visible R& D operation: \nManage people, laboratories, equipment, vendors, and project budgets within CTO-approved plans.\nPublish clear progress, experimental evidence, risks, capacity constraints, and decisions required.\nUse approved AI-assisted engineering and automation tools where they improve measurable outcomes.\nCollaborate with the separate AI Engineering function without duplicating its mandate, and coordinate productization capacity with Engineering rather than creating unplanned delivery or support commitments.\n\nRequirements: \nLeadership experience. Typically 15+ years in engineering, applied R& D, or technology development, including 5+ years leading multidisciplinary teams, technical leaders, or complex product-development programs.\nIntegrated product development. A demonstrated record of taking new technologies from concept through experimentation, prototypes, and validation into products used in real operating environments. Experience must span software and physical-device or embedded-system development, not solely application delivery.\nTechnical depth and breadth. Deep expertise in at least one relevant discipline, with credible working knowledge across software, electronics, firmware, computer vision, and system validation. Able to challenge specialist decisions and understand interfaces without being the principal expert in every field.\nResearch and engineering judgement. Strong capability in experimental design, quantitative evaluation, systems thinking, technical risk assessment, and root-cause analysis. Comfortable with incomplete requirements and willing to change direction when evidence contradicts an assumption.\nPractical development fluency. Experience working with software and embedded development environments, source control, automated testing, and technical documentation. Familiarity with relevant technologies such as C/C++, Python or Java, embedded Linux or real-time systems, and vision or machine-learning tooling; mastery of every listed technology is not required.\nPeople and stakeholder leadership. Proven hiring, coaching, performance management, and cross-functional leadership skills. Able to communicate technical trade-offs clearly to executives, product, customers, and partners and collaborate effectively across geographies and time zones.\nEducation. Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, electronics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, robotics, or a related field. A PhD in a relevant discipline is preferred but not mandatory; practical innovation and product-development outcomes are essential.\nExperience that would be particularly valuable: RFID or RF systems; sensor fusion; edge AI; computer vision in uncontrolled environments; industrial automation; robotics; connected devices; automotive electronics; medical devices; or other high-reliability products.\nExposure to regulated gaming, manufacturing partners, prototype-to-production transfer, invention disclosures, or university collaboration would be an advantage. Prior casino-industry experience is useful, but not essential.\nSkills\nAI, R&D, RFID, computer vision, development, electronics, embedded, firmware, hardware, machine learning, research","description_format":"text","description_chars":7422,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"India","iso":"IN","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["iGaming & Gambling","Barcode & RFID Hardware"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-20T11:35:00Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":81,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.896,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":11,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["seen:11","velocity","win:mid","comp:attention"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T16:28:50Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":25502,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1303},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1303"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwalker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fwalker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fwalker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/walker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwalker-digital-table-systems-director-of-research-development"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":2920144}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"wdtablesystems.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":2920144},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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