Assistant Director - Engineering & Industry Programs

You will join SASTech as Assistant Director, Engineering and Industry Programs. The mandate is straightforward but difficult: build the external ecosystem that ensures SASTech students engage with problems that actually matter. Startups solving hard engineering challenges. Government technology missions. Research institutions working on the next generation of systems. You will map that ecosystem, build trust inside it, and create structured pathways that turn those relationships into real work for students.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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Day to day, here is what this role looks like:<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Build and maintain a live map of India's engineering ecosystem: deep\-tech startups, developer platforms, engineering\-first companies (Postman, BrowserStack, Razorpay and their counterparts), government technology missions (DRDO, ISRO, C\-DAC, MeitY), and research institutions<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Build relationships directly with founders, CTOs, Heads of Engineering, research scientists, and government program leads. Not with HR. These relationships should be built on technical credibility and intellectual exchange, not transactional placement discussions<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Bring real problem statements to campus and structure them into capstone projects, lab challenges, research collaborations, and technology fellowships. Students should be solving problems that matter to the ecosystem, not problems invented for a grade<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Develop partnerships with government technology missions and public research labs for research projects, student fellowships, and lab engagements that give students exposure to systems being built at national scale<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Convert ecosystem credibility into structured pipelines: year\-long internships, applied research collaborations, and full\-time engineering roles at companies that care about the quality of their engineering<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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• Track and communicate outcomes, prototypes built, research collaborations established, industry problems solved, and student pathways created. This record of delivery is what builds SASTech's reputation as a serious engineering institution<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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  Requirements<\/h3>

  We are looking for one of two profiles. Engineering from a top institution, an MBA from a top IIM, and 2 to 5 years at BCG, Bain, McKinsey, or AT Kearney. Or someone with 3 to 7 years of experience inside a technology startup, with the engineering depth and credibility to have earned the trust of technical teams. Beyond the profile, here is what we actually care about.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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  Domain and Relationship Depth<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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  • Credible working knowledge of at least one domain: full\-stack engineering, data science and ML, systems engineering, or algorithms and software engineering. Enough to have a substantive conversation with a CTO or research scientist and tell a real problem from packaging<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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  • The ability to map an engineering organisation's culture from a conversation and judge whether a partnership will actually stretch students or just look good in a report<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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    The Person<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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    • You are one of two profiles. An engineering degree from a top institution, an MBA from a top IIM, and 2 to 5 years at BCG, Bain, McKinsey, or AT Kearney. Or you skipped the MBA and spent 3 to 7 years building inside a technology startup, close enough to engineering teams that founders trusted you with things that mattered<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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    • You are not a placement person and you do not think like one. You are intellectually curious, comfortable with founders, scientists, and policymakers in the same week, and you build relationships that last because you bring genuine value to every conversation<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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    • You are energised by building something from scratch. The ambiguity of early\-stage institution building does not unsettle you. You know which relationships are worth months of patient nurturing and which are not<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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      Good to Have<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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      • Existing relationships in India's deep\-tech startup ecosystem, developer communities, or government technology programs<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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      • Prior experience in ecosystem roles at innovation programs, research labs, accelerators, or developer platforms<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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        Benefits<\/h3>

        Here is the honest pitch: we are building IIT 2.0. Not by replicating what the IITs have done, but in the spirit of what they represented: a bold institutional bet on India's future. We operate like a startup inside a university, which means real ownership over your domain, and working alongside faculty who have built real systems, not just written about them.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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        You will not be filling a vacancy. You will be laying a foundation. The people who join SASTech in these early years will shape what this institution becomes. If you want to make a dent in how India builds and teaches technology, this is where that work happens.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
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