Engagement Principal, Chanakya

About the role

Description from the employer’s posting. Check the employer’s page for the current version.

About Sarvam

Sarvam is building the bedrock of Sovereign AI for India. The company is developing India’s full-stack sovereign AI platform, building across research, models, infrastructure and applications with a singular focus on making AI genuinely work for India. Sarvam works with leading enterprises and public institutions and is backed by Lightspeed, Peak XV, and Khosla Ventures. Sarvam partners with India’s leading brands, including Tata Capital, SBI Life, CRED, IDFC, and LIC.

About the Role

Engagement Principal is a senior client-facing role in the Chanakya vertical. You own pipeline development, account strategy, and long-term engagement management across defence and strategic sector clients. This is not a quota-chasing sales role — it is a builder role for someone who understands the defence procurement landscape, can engage at the command and technical leadership level, and can convert complex AI capability into funded, deployable programmes.

What You’ll Do

• Own GTM strategy and pipeline for this vertical: from prospecting through programme initiation.

• Build and maintain relationships at the decision-making level: Acquisition directorates, CTO offices, field and HQ command, and PSU leadership.

• Translate Sarvam’s technical capability into proposals and narratives that resonate across technical and command-level stakeholders.

• Lead RFI/RFP responses, PoC scoping, and commercial negotiation — with full technical fluency.

• Collaborate with Strategic Deployment Engineers and the product team to ensure client expectations are grounded in what we can actually deliver.

• Manage account health, renewal strategy, and expansion pipeline for active accounts.

• Surface emerging requirements, policy shifts, and competitor moves that should shape our roadmap.

What We’re Looking For

• 7–12 years of total experience, with at least 4 years in strategic sector GTM, defence procurement consulting, or enterprise sales in a technical domain.

• Track record of closing and managing multi-crore engagements in disciplined or complex environments: defence, critical infrastructure, or complex enterprise clients.

• Functional understanding of defence procurement frameworks: DRDO, DPP, emergency procurement, Make-I/Make-II.

• Strong executive presence: comfortable in flag-level meetings and senior CTO offices, and equally comfortable with working-level technical teams.

• Familiarity with GenAI/ML capability sufficient to hold a credible conversation about what Sarvam’s stack can and cannot do.

• Active network in the Indian defence ecosystem (Army, Navy, IAF, DRDO, DPP offices, PSUs, DSSC) is an advantage.

Bonus Points

• You’ve built a pipeline in a domain where trust takes years — and moved it faster than expected.

• You’ve held a deal together through difficult technical delivery without damaging the client relationship.

• You are well-networked in the defence and strategic sector ecosystem.

• Experience owning complex, ambiguous mandates at a consulting firm, with accountability for outcomes.

Note: We are looking for people who can own the outcomes described here, not people who match every line of this specification. If this problem excites you and you believe you can do this work, we want to hear from you.

Why Sarvam?

Sarvam is a fast-moving, high talent-density team building full-stack AI for India, working on problems that push the frontiers of AI with real population-scale impact.

• Work alongside researchers, engineers, builders, and business leaders who move fast and hold each other to a very high bar.

• High ownership and high impact, from day one.

• Everything we do is AI-first, from the way we build and ship to the way we think about problems.

• You can work on problems that could change how an entire country learns, works, and communicates.

If you want to work on problems at the frontier of AI in India, Sarvam is the place to be.