Engagement Principal, Chanakya

The role

The Engagement Principal owns pipeline development, account strategy, and long-term engagement management for defence and strategic sector clients. This role involves translating technical AI capabilities into funded programmes and managing relationships with decision-makers.

What you will do

• Own GTM strategy and pipeline for the vertical from prospecting through programme initiation.
• Build and maintain relationships at the decision-making level including Acquisition directorates, CTO offices, field and HQ command, and PSU leadership.
• Translate technical capability into proposals and narratives for technical and command-level stakeholders.
• Lead RFI/RFP responses, PoC scoping, and commercial negotiation.
• Collaborate with Strategic Deployment Engineers and the product team.
• Manage account health, renewal strategy, and expansion pipeline for active accounts.
• Surface emerging requirements, policy shifts, and competitor moves to shape the roadmap.

Required qualifications

• 7–12 years of total experience.
• 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 defence, critical infrastructure, or complex enterprise clients.
• Functional understanding of defence procurement frameworks: DRDO, DPP, emergency procurement, Make-I/Make-II.
• Strong executive presence for flag-level meetings and senior CTO offices.
• Familiarity with GenAI/ML capability sufficient to hold a credible conversation about the stack.

Nice to have

• Active network in the Indian defence ecosystem (Army, Navy, IAF, DRDO, DPP offices, PSUs, DSSC)
• Built a pipeline in a domain where trust takes years and moved it faster than expected
• Held a deal together through difficult technical delivery without damaging the client relationship
• Well-networked in the defence and strategic sector ecosystem
• Experience owning complex, ambiguous mandates at a consulting firm

About the company

Sarvam is building the bedrock of Sovereign AI for India by developing a full-stack sovereign AI platform across research, models, infrastructure and applications. The company is backed by Lightspeed, Peak XV, and Khosla Ventures.