Service Delivery Director

Job Summary

Own end-to-end delivery of a multi-pod platform software engagement supporting a leading semiconductor customer's IoT and edge compute portfolio. The programme is organised as twelve horizontal capability pods whose output is reused across several product lines, so the Program Lead's job is less about running one project plan and more about keeping twelve interdependent workstreams honest: making sure the right skills are in the right pod, that cross-pod dependencies surface before they become slips, that the customer's engineering leadership trusts what they are told, and that quality and security obligations are met on platform software that ships into long-lifecycle products. This is a leadership role with technical credibility as a prerequisite — the holder must be able to sit in a design or defect review, follow the argument, and challenge a pod lead's estimate or root-cause claim without needing it translated. 

Key Responsibilities

Delivery ownershipOwn the engagement delivery plan across all twelve pods — scope, milestones, dependencies, risks and release commitments — and keep a single credible view of status rather than twelve local ones.Run the delivery cadence: sprint and release governance, cross-pod dependency reviews, risk and issue management, and a weekly and monthly reporting rhythm to both HCLTech and customer leadership.Identify cross-pod dependencies early and broker them — a camera pipeline change that breaks a validation suite, or a kernel uplift that invalidates a security assumption, is a programme problem before it is a pod problem.Own escalation management end to end: triage, ownership assignment, customer communication and post-resolution follow-through, including root-cause reviews that change process rather than just closing tickets.Maintain programme-level quality and release gates so no pod ships against the engagement's exit criteria in isolation.

Customer governanceAct as the primary delivery interface to the customer's engineering leadership — steering committee participation, quarterly reviews, and the day-to-day judgement calls between them.Translate the customer's shifting product priorities into concrete pod-level scope changes, staffing moves and revised commitments, and say clearly when a request cannot be absorbed without trade-off.Protect the engagement's credibility: give early, accurate warning on slippage rather than late reassurance, and make sure commitments made to the customer are ones the pods have actually agreed.Manage confidentiality and IP obligations in practice, not just on paper — silicon vendor errata, pre-release documentation and customer roadmap material all flow through this programme.

Skill Requirements

Staffing, capability and hiringOwn the staffing plan across all twelve pods — headcount, skill mix, ramp curves and bench management against a moving requirement set.

Drive hiring quality: set and hold the technical bar, own the screening and interview process with pod leads, and challenge pipeline volume that is not converting into hires.

Recognise and act on structural sourcing problems — a pod where no candidate clears the bar over successive batches is a brief that needs rewriting, not more CVs.

Build capability deliberately: ramp-up plans for engineers hired with a known gap, cross-pod skill development, succession cover for single points of knowledge, and retention of scarce specialists.

Manage the transition from the initial co-location period into the distributed Hyderabad and Bangalore model without losing delivery velocity or customer confidence.

Technical stewardshipMaintain enough technical depth across embedded Linux platform software, multimedia, connectivity, security and validation to steer architecture and estimation conversations credibly.

Arbitrate technical trade-offs that cross pod boundaries — where a decision on buffer management, boot policy or update strategy affects several pods at once.

Hold the engagement to engineering discipline: code review, CI, reproducible builds, defect triage rigour, security patching and long-lifecycle maintenance obligations.

Sponsor engineering improvements that no single pod will fund on its own, such as shared test infrastructure, automation, or tooling that reduces cross-pod integration cost.

Other Requirements

Commercial and operationalOwn effort estimation, resource forecasting and utilisation for the engagement, and support scope, pricing and contract-change discussions with account leadership.

Manage programme financials to plan — cost of delivery, staffing mix and productivity — and flag commercial risk arising from technical reality.

Contribute to growth by identifying adjacent scope the delivery track record earns the right to pursue, and by turning delivered capability into a credible story for new pods or workstreams.

Must-Have Experience15 – 20 years in embedded, platform or silicon-adjacent software engineering, including at least 5 years owning delivery or programme leadership for a multi-team engagement.

Track record of running a distributed engineering programme of comparable scale — multiple parallel workstreams, 40+ engineers or several concurrent pods or squads — with accountability for schedule, quality and staffing.

Demonstrable technical grounding in embedded Linux platform software: BSP and kernel, device drivers, board bring-up, build systems such as Yocto, and the realities of debugging on hardware.

Credibility here is non-negotiable, because pod leads will not accept direction from someone who cannot follow a root-cause discussion.Experience owning a technology-customer relationship at engineering-leadership level, including steering committees, escalation ownership and difficult schedule conversations.

Hands-on staffing and hiring ownership at scale — setting the technical bar, running interview loops, and managing ramp and bench in a fluctuating demand environment.

Fluency in engineering delivery mechanics: dependency and risk management, release governance, defect and escalation triage, metrics that reflect reality rather than flatter it.

Clear, direct written and verbal communication in English, and the judgement to know when bad news needs to travel fast.Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electronics, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.

Good-to-Have ExperiencePrior delivery experience with a semiconductor, silicon-vendor or SoC-platform customer, and familiarity with how vendor software releases, errata and reference platforms actually work.

Exposure across several of this programme's domains — platform security, camera and video, audio, connectivity, robotics middleware, on-device AI, OTA and lifecycle management, or validation and test automation.

Experience standing up an engagement from scratch: initial staffing, co-location ramp, process definition and the first delivery milestones.

Familiarity with long-lifecycle product obligations — LTS branching, CVE and security patch delivery, and multi-year sustaining engineering.

Working knowledge of functional safety, security certification or industrial compliance regimes relevant to edge products.

Experience managing offshore and onshore split delivery, and vendor or subcontractor coordination.

Formal delivery or programme management credentials, valued as a complement to engineering depth rather than a substitute for it.