Chief technology officer

Position - Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

UIDAI Technology Centre, Bengaluru

Location: Bengaluru (On-site)

Experience: 20+ years

₹ Compensation: ₹1 Crore per annum (negotiable, based on profile)

Reporting to: DDG, Technology Centre

ABOUT THE ROLE

UIDAI is looking for a visionary Chief Technology Officer to own one of the world's largest digital identity platforms. As CTO, you will own the technology stack, the platform engineering vision and the long-term architecture roadmap. You will lead modernisation, set enterprise standards, build an AI-first way of working, put zero-trust security in place, and keep every platform service running at five-nines availability.

Strategic Engineering Mandate & Goals

Technology Stack Governance & Modernisation

Own the full lifecycle of the stack: software, enterprise hardware, cloud-native infrastructure and domain-specific hardware Set enterprise architecture standards, assess technical debt and lead modernisation of mission-critical platforms Standardise frameworks, runtimes, databases and middleware so systems work together, avoid vendor lock-in and stay agile

Strategic Roadmap & R& D

Build and govern multi-year technology roadmaps aligned with organisational goals Lead R& D in partnership with premier academic, research and industry institutions Sponsor and direct proofs-of-concept (POCs) on next-generation architectures, to lower the risk of production rollouts

Platform Engineering & Developer Velocity

Build a self-service Internal Developer Platform (IDP) that gives teams deployment speed on par with the hyperscalers Automate provisioning, orchestration and CI/CD pipelines Improve developer experience and productivity, and replace manual, ticket-driven workflows

Enterprise AI & Intelligent Automation

Lead an AI-first strategy across fraud management, observability, infrastructure and developer tooling Put intelligent automation to work for anomaly detection, capacity forecasting, incident triage and reducing routine operational work Make AI-first thinking the default design principle for new capabilities

Observability & Operational Resilience (99.999%)

Design full-stack telemetry (metrics, logs, traces, synthetic testing) to cut detection and resolution times (MTTD/MTTR) Build SRE practices, error-budget governance and resilience testing into how teams work Be the senior escalation point during critical outages and capacity issues

Security, Compliance & Data Governance

Build zero-trust security and data protection into the whole SDLC Enforce data residency, audit and regulatory compliance without slowing engineering down Hold final technical sign-off on platform architecture, data platforms and security baselines

Operational Governance

Advise on build vs. outsource vs. hybrid delivery models, including vendor evaluation and contract deliverables Lead talent strategy: team structure, hiring and performance management across systems, software, security and domain architects Act as the executive escalation point for cross-functional blockers

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Education

Essential: BE / MS / M. Tech / ME in Computer Science, IT, Electronics or an allied discipline from a premier institution Desirable: Ph D in a relevant engineering discipline

Experience & Competencies

20+ years of progressive experience in IT and software engineering, including executive technology leadership roles A track record of setting multi-year roadmaps and delivering large-scale platform modernisation Deep expertise in high-concurrency developer platforms, cloud-native control planes, modern data backbones and SRE programs at consumer scale or in mission-critical settings Hands-on experience building an AI-first engineering culture and embedding ML into core platform operations Strong knowledge of global best practices in software, hardware and cybersecurity Added advantage: experience with high-security hardware, identity architectures or biometric technologies

WHY JOIN?

Shape the technology behind a digital identity platform that serves over a billion people, and lead innovation at national scale.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply through Linked In or send your CV to with the subject line "Application – CTO, UIDAI Bengaluru".