Universal Electronics Inc.
Managing Director - India Operations
TLDR
Lead India operations by building high-performance teams, driving innovation, and ensuring alignment with global product strategy while managing financial and operational performance.
The Managing Director (MD) – India Operations leads the India operations of UEI. The role is focused on building and scaling high-performance product and engineering teams, driving innovation, ensuring strong governance, and aligning India’s product development capabilities with the company’s global product strategy.
This is a product-centric leadership role with full responsibility for operational oversight, talent strategy, regulatory compliance, and financial performance of the Indian entity.
The MD-India Operations will report to the Global Sr. VP-Engineering.
Responsibilities:
Qualification / skills:
- Strategic Leadership
- Define and execute India’s strategy as a part of Global product development organization
- Align engineering and project roadmaps with global business priorities
- Drive long-term capability building in areas such as platform architecture, AI/ML, cloud-native systems, and product scalability
- Provide strategic insights on technology trends, talent markets, and innovation opportunities in India
- Product & Engineering Leadership
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- Oversee end-to-end project development lifecycle
- Ensure high standards of architecture, scalability, performance, and reliability
- Drive technical excellence, code quality, and secure development practices
- Collaborate with global Product/Project Management to translate business needs into execution
- Innovation & Technology Direction
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- Build India as a center of excellence for product development
- Sponsor R&D initiatives and emerging technology exploration
- Strengthen platform capabilities, cloud optimization, and product modernization
- Encourage IP creation, patents, and differentiated product capabilities
- Financial & Operational Management
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- Own India entity financial performance
- Develop and manage annual budgets and operating plans
- Ensure cost optimization without compromising on productivity and product quality
- Align financial reporting with US parent company requirements
- Ensure Governance & Regulatory Compliance w.r.t financial and labor compliances.
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- Oversee statutory audits, filings, and board governance processes
- Act as Director on the Board of the Indian subsidiary
- Oversight of all other support functions to ensure business continuity
- Talent & Culture Leadership
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- Build and retain high-caliber engineering and product teams
- Develop succession plans and leadership bench strength
- Foster a product-driven, innovation-first culture
- Ensure alignment with global corporate values and performance standards
- Promote diversity, inclusion, and ethical conduct
- Cross-Border Alignment
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- Serve as primary liaison between India operations and other UEI locations, including US headquarters
- Ensure consistent execution of global product strategy
- Maintain transparency in performance reporting and risk management
- Drive strong collaboration across distributed global teams
- Functional Responsibilities
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- Responsible for directly managing SQA (SW development process definition and compliance team), IVV (Independent testing team), and Advance Tech (Platform development team)
- Responsible for directly managing China SW team, providing support for dedicated, preset and Aircon RCU SW development. Also providing support for production programming setup
- Responsible for Japan outsource SW development team to support projects in Japan (Daikin, Mitsubishi). This team also provides design review support with customers in Japan
- Responsible for oversight to Firmware, Data Management, QS Cloud and QS SDK teams.
- Responsible for oversight to support teams (HR, Finance, IT and Facilities)
- Make In India Initiative
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- Provide local management oversight to Make in India projects
- Help with identifying and developing local suppliers and relationship building with R&D teams of the customer
- BE/BTech/MTech/MS in ECE/EEE/Telecom/Computer Science. An MBA will be desirable.
- 20+ years of overall experience, with 10+ years of technical management and people management, with 10+ years in senior leadership roles managing large engineering organizations including operations and budget management
- Proven experience in scaling and managing Embedded software products development, process definition and compliance and aligning with industry trends
- Good understanding of cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and secure development
- Ability to advise others and manage divergent interests and perspectives
- Experience working in a global, cross-border product organization
- Strong product and platform mindset
- Deep engineering credibility
- Strategic and systems thinking
- Financial discipline
- Governance orientation
- High integrity and accountability
- Ability to scale teams and manage complexity
- Ability to create plans to align technical issues with business strategy
- Advanced people management skills.
Universal Electronics Inc. designs and develops advanced wireless control solutions that enhance connectivity and sustainability for smart home environments. We cater to Fortune 100 companies, delivering innovative products that shape the future of home automation.
Managing Director