The Role
Lead CTeBS’s 30+ engineers across three product teams through Technical Managers. Build the engineering leadership layer, culture, career frameworks, hiring pipeline, and operating model. Translate business goals into multi-quarter plans, guide platform architecture, improve delivery predictability, reduce firefighting, manage technical debt, and represent engineering at the leadership level. The role owns organizational scaling, team health, engineering metrics, talent development, and long-term capability building.
Summary Generated by Built In
About CTeBS
CTeBS (Classic Technologies & Business Solutions) is a purpose-built software company for the fashion manufacturing industry, and a subsidiary of Classic Fashion Apparel Industry Ltd. We build the Trendz Biz Suite — a unified enterprise platform covering production planning, ERP, quality management, HR, and data intelligence for fashion manufacturers.
With a 70+ person team in Kochi and live deployments in production, we are now scaling our engineering organisation to match our next phase of growth. This is a pivotal leadership hire.
The Role
As Head of Product Engineering, you will be CTeBS's senior-most engineering leader — building the leadership layer, establishing the culture, and designing the operating model that takes our engineering function from delivery-focused to capability-driven.
You will lead 30+ engineers across three product teams through a layer of Technical Managers, and sit on the CTeBS leadership team reporting directly to the Business Unit Head.
This is not a role for someone looking to grow into engineering leadership. It is for someone who has done it — and wants to do it again with full ownership and executive backing.
What You Will Own
Engineering Organisation & Culture
- Lead three product engineering teams through Technical Managers — build their capability as much as the team's
- Establish engineering values, norms, and a culture of accountability, ownership, and craft
- Design and implement career ladders, performance frameworks, and individual development plans
- Drive active, structured hiring — own the talent pipeline from sourcing to onboarding
Strategy & Delivery
- Translate product vision and business goals into multi-quarter engineering plans
- Move the organisation from reactive firefighting to proactive, planned delivery
- Own platform architecture direction in partnership with Solution Architecture
- Represent engineering credibly at the leadership table — costs, timelines, tradeoffs
Team Building & Long-Term Thinking
- Identify structural risks, capability gaps, and technical debt early — and build plans to address them
- Create an environment where strong engineers stay, grow, and do their best work
- Balance the urgency of today's delivery with the investment required for tomorrow's scale
What We Are Looking For
Must-Have
- 14–20 years in software engineering, with 5–8 years in engineering leadership — managing managers, not just engineers
- Demonstrated experience leading engineering organisations of 25+ people across multiple teams in a B2B SaaS or enterprise product company
- Proven track record of building engineering culture — not just inheriting a healthy team
- Active owner of hiring: built pipelines, interviewed at scale, closed strong candidates
- Strong communicator — equally credible with engineers and business stakeholders
Strongly Preferred
- Exposure to manufacturing, supply chain, ERP, or industrial enterprise software domains
- Experience leading an engineering org through a growth or transformation phase
- Prior title of Director of Engineering, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering at a product company
- Familiarity with modern engineering practices — CI/CD, platform thinking, developer experience
What Success Looks Like
- Deep understanding of team health, delivery state, and key risks across all three teams: First 30 days
- Technical Managers identified or in place; clear ownership and accountability structures established: 60 days
- Engineering metrics baseline set; active hiring pipeline running; firefighting visibly reduced: 90 days
- Career frameworks live; delivery predictability measurably higher; morale and retention improved: 6 months
- High-performing, self-directed engineering org; CTeBS scales into new product lines without engineering being the bottleneck: 12 months
Why This Role. Why CTeBS.
- Real ownership — your decisions will shape the organisation visibly and lastingly, with full executive backing
- Fashion manufacturing is a massive, underserved industry — purpose-built software for this space is rare, and CTeBS is building it
- The product is live, customers are real — the next phase is about scale, not survival
- Build the engineering leadership layer largely from scratch — a rare, career-defining opportunity
- Kochi offers a strong and growing engineering talent pool with quality of life that metros cannot match
Skills Required
- 14–20 years of experience in software engineering
- 5–8 years of engineering leadership experience managing managers
- Experience leading engineering organizations of 25 or more people across multiple teams
- Experience in a B2B SaaS or enterprise product company
- Proven experience building engineering culture
- Experience owning hiring pipelines, interviewing at scale, and closing candidates
- Strong communication skills with engineers and business stakeholders
- Exposure to manufacturing, supply chain, ERP, or industrial enterprise software
- Experience leading an engineering organization through growth or transformation
- Prior Director of Engineering, VP Engineering, or Head of Engineering title at a product company
- Familiarity with modern engineering practices, including CI/CD, platform thinking, and developer experience
Am I A Good Fit?
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The Company
What We Do
Classic Technologies & Business Solutions (CTeBS) develops smart-factory software for apparel and fashion manufacturers. Its Trendz ecosystem helps digitize production, quality control, planning, maintenance, and factory operations, with integrated tools for tracking and data-driven decision-making. Established as a technology innovation center for apparel industries, the company develops intuitive digital solutions intended to improve productivity and operational efficiency for manufacturers in India and worldwide.
