Director of Engineering

About Solique: We are cutting-edge technology and AI solutions in the domain of tax, regulatory compliance, and financial services. Our aim is to bridge the gap between subject matter expertise and technology by developing intelligent, scalable, and innovative solutions that empower professionals and businesses globally. We are on a mission to create world-class Tax Advisory tools that empower organizations to deliver accurate, efficient, and technology-driven tax advisory solutions. By integrating AI and automation, we enable professionals to streamline complex tax processes, enhance compliance, and drive strategic decision-making with confidence.Web Link: https://asksolique.aiLinkedIn: (19) LinkedIn Position Summary: At Solique, we are seeking an accomplished and highly technical Director of Engineer to lead our Backend Engineering and AI/ML Engineering functions. The ideal candidate operates as a true player-coach, combining deep technical expertise with strong leadership capability. This role is responsible for owning the technology stack, guiding engineering culture, and ensuring timely and high-quality delivery across all engineering initiatives.The Director of Engineering is expected to devote approximately 60% of their time to hands-on technical contributions—including system architecture, in-depth code reviews, and resolving technical blockers—and 40% to strategic planning, hiring, and team management activities. Functional Responsibilities:Ø AI Strategy & RAG Architecture ·      LLM Orchestration: Architect, optimize, and scale Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems to ensure accurate retrieval of legal and tax-related context for high-precision query responses.·      Model Lifecycle Management: Lead end-to-end AI workflows, including data preparation, vectorization, fine-tuning open-source models, and integrating with leading APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).·      Model Evaluation & Quality: Establish comprehensive evaluation frameworks (BLEU, ROUGE, HumanEval) to ensure accuracy, enhance model “faithfulness,” and minimize hallucinations in sensitive tax outputs. Ø Backend Architecture & Security·      Core Platform Engineering: Design and maintain scalable, high-throughput REST APIs using Python (FastAPI preferred). Ensure seamless communication between AI inference layers and frontend systems.·      Data Architecture: Manage complex PostgreSQL schema design, query optimization, and enforce strict data integrity and compliance aligned with financial-sector regulations.·      Infrastructure Leadership: Oversee cloud systems to ensure reliability, security, disaster recovery, and cost-effective scaling.Ø  Leadership & Operations·      Execution Excellence: Own the engineering operational cadence—including sprint planning, stand-ups, and performance tracking—acting as the primary escalation point for technical blockers.·      Team Building: Define the engineering hiring bar. Lead sourcing, interviewing, and recruiting of high-caliber backend and AI/ML talent.·      Culture & Mentorship: Build and maintain a culture of technical rigor, accountability, and continuous improvement. Mentor engineers in writing clean, robust, and maintainable code. What We Are Looking For :Ø Technical Expertise (Must-Haves)·      Programming Mastery: Expert-level proficiency in Python, the core language of our platform.·      Backend Experience: Proven experience developing production-grade systems using FastAPI (or Flask/Django) and PostgreSQL.·      AI/ML Competency: Hands-on experience deploying LLMs and working with vector databases. Strong understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and RAG systems.·      Architectural Design: Demonstrated ability to design microservices, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures.Ø Leadership Attributes·      Startup Acumen: Experience taking products from zero to one. Comfortable making decisions in ambiguity and operating with urgency.·      Pragmatism: Strong judgment on balancing technical debt with speed of execution.·      Hands-On Leadership: Deeply technical and willing to dive into code, debug production issues, and guide architectural decisions.Qualifications:Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field.10+ years of overall software engineering experience.Minimum 3 years of experience leading or managing technical teams.What We Offer:Strategic Impact: An opportunity to work at the intersection of Finance and AI, addressing a high-impact problem in the Indian and global markets.Ownership: Significant autonomy and influence in shaping the engineering organization from the ground up.Compensation: Competitive salary and ESOPs commensurate with experience and impact.