Head of Engineering

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