Vice President – Software Development - Mumbai - Accelya

Description

Vice President – Software Development

Location: Mumbai, India

About Accelya

Open by Nature. Built for the Future. Proven at Scale.

At Accelya, we are on a mission to fundamentally transform airline retailing—dragging it out of the 1950s and into the AI- and agentic-driven future. We are the leaders in Products we are providing , powering 200+ airlines worldwide and acting as a key force of change at IATA and across the global airline ecosystem.

Backed for the long term by Vista Equity Partners, Accelya has 2,500+ employees across 10 global offices and is trusted by airlines to deliver today while building for tomorrow.

If being part of a revolution that transforms every air traveller's experience excites you—keep reading.

• If you're passionate about redefining human–AI collaboration to make travel smarter, seamless, and accessible—this is your place.
• If the challenge of working in a high-impact, always-on environment, where airlines demand excellence, energizes you—welcome aboard.
• If operating in a world where airlines never sleep, 99.999% SLA is the norm, and the sun never sets on your work excites you—this role is for you.

Role Purpose

We are seeking a Vice President of Software Development to lead our Mumbai engineering hub. This is a role for a "Technologist-Statesman"—someone who owns outcomes at a global scale, architects for 99.999% availability, and can inspire a world-class engineering culture that never sleeps

Expert in modernizing complex legacy architectures (C/Java) into cloud-native, AI-augmented ecosystems. Proven track record of managing global, cross-functional teams and delivering 99.999% SLA reliability for high-transaction industries

You are technically exceptional, with deep expertise in SQL's, Java and C, modern web technologies, and AWS. You bring strong judgment—knowing when to push forward, pivot, or stay the course. You take ownership of large, mission-critical domains and excel them into industry benchmarks. You can confidently represent Accelya before airline executives, and customers, clearly articulating not just what we are building, but why it matters.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Engineering Leadership

• Define and execute the 3-5 year engineering vision for the products, define technical roadmap, aligning technology strategy with product goals, business objectives, and industry standards.

Architectural Ownership

• Own and govern the technical architecture, scalability, and resilience of multiple products
• Drive architectural decisions that ensure security, performance, scalability, and long-term maintainability at enterprise scale
• Use of AI in products to derive value for customers
• Provide leadership across backend technology services and front-end UI engineering, ensuring cohesive system design, seamless integration, and consistent engineering standards.

Product Development & Delivery Excellence

• Oversee end-to-end product development using AI —from strategic planning to global deployment—with a strong focus on quality, predictability, and speed. Usage of AI to enhance products

Organization, Talent & Culture Leadership

• Build, mentor, and scale a world-class, globally distributed engineering organization.
• Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.

Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement

• Establish engineering metrics, quality standards, and governance models to continuously improve delivery velocity, reliability, and product quality.
• Drive process, tooling, and platform improvements to support 24x7 operations and 99.999% SLA expectations.

What You Bring to the Role

• 15+ years in hands-on engineering with deep expertise in Java, Spring Boot, and SQL optimization. Specific experience with high-performance legacy systems is a significant advantage.
• 7+ years in senior engineering leadership roles (Director / VP level), leading large, cross-functional, and geographically distributed teams(200+), including teams outside India.
• Proven success building and scaling high-performing engineering organizations in complex, always-on environments.
• Experience with use of AI in engineering and a strong full-stack product mindset.
• Cloud-Native Vision: Proven success in architecting and deploying massive SaaS platforms on cloud (AWS preferred) , with a focus on cost-efficiency and performance
• Demonstrated ability to architect scalable, high-performance SaaS platforms, making thoughtful trade-offs with a long-term strategic lens.
• Exceptional communication and executive presence, with the ability to influence internal leaders, peer teams and industry stakeholders.
• Industry Context: (Preferred) Experience in FinTech, TravelTech, or high-frequency transaction environments where the "cost of failure" is extreme. A deeply customer-centric approach, with passion for solving airline challenges and shaping the future of global travel technology.

Interview process will be as below:

upon profile shortlisting;

1. Online UCAT assessment
2. VC interview
3. In person interview
4. HR discussion