About Opptra

Opptra, headquartered in Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India (www.opptra.com), is at the forefront of revolutionizing global expansion for consumer brands, with a strategic focus on ecommerce and digital capabilities across Asia. We are developing a robust portfolio of category-specialized franchising businesses, fortified by our centralized technology platform and extensive global supply chain infrastructure.

Our innovative approach creates market access through franchising businesses that function as master franchisees or licensing partners for brands entering new markets. Unlike traditional distributors focused on brick-and-mortar, our model prioritizes advanced ecommerce expertise to accelerate market entry, while skillfully balancing online and offline channels to align with local consumer behavior in Asian markets.

With 70% of global consumer growth originating from Asia, our current focus is on enabling access to these high-potential markets. Our model offers significant advantages for brands:

• Reduced market entry costs
• Broader consumer reach
• Faster testing and learning capabilities compared to traditional retail
• Deep local expertise backed by global resources

The Role: Forward Deployed Engineer

As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Opptra in Bangalore, you will embody the role of a builder at the frontier. This position is ideal for someone who thrives amidst the complex interplay of product vision, customer realities, and technical execution. You will be deeply embedded with brand operations teams, marketplace partners, and regional warehouses, directly contributing to our P&L by deploying cutting-edge AI agents and enhancing platform infrastructure.

This is a unique hybrid role, transcending "pure" engineering or "pure" product management. You will be responsible for writing production-grade code, designing efficient workflows, debugging intricate data pipelines, and negotiating critical API contracts with marketplace teams. Expect to build sophisticated pricing agents and empower brand managers through comprehensive training on their supervision.

Key Outcomes

Agent-Led Merchandising Use Cases

• Identify high-impact AI use-cases within overall merchandising operations (including pricing, promotions, and assortment across category pods).
• Define clear "jobs to be done" for AI agents (e.g., Dynamic Markdown Strategist, Regional Price Optimizer, Inventory Allocation Advisor).
• Create comprehensive Agent use-case canvases detailing flows, prompts, datasets, and measurable outcomes.

POC Development & Prototyping

• Build rapid no-code AI Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) utilizing tools such as LangChain, Flowise, or CrewAI.
• Develop and demonstrate early-stage agents (e.g., Pricing Validator, Assortment Gap Finder, Auto Bundler) using platforms like Replit, Zapier, or n8n.
• Integrate Generative AI (GenAI) agents with various data sources (CSV, APIs, mock dashboards) to simulate and refine decision-making processes.

Experimentation & Feedback Loops

• Conduct agile tests (manual A/Bs, sandbox trials) with category managers to validate the tangible value of developed agents.
• Gather qualitative feedback on workflow efficiency, user trust, and overall usability.
• Strategically prioritize agents that effectively automate high-effort, low-creativity tasks.

Agent Integration Readiness

• Prepare meticulously structured specifications for successful POCs (including flows, prompts, guardrails, and integrations) for seamless hand-off to the core engineering team.
• Collaborate closely with the internal AI team to translate validated POCs into scalable, production-ready agent workflows.
• Track "Time to POC → Time to Value" metrics to inform and prioritize rollout strategies.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• Experience: 3+ years in product management, category operations, growth, or ecommerce tooling.
• Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with pricing and merchandising strategy within omnichannel environments.
• AI Tooling: Exposure to AI tools such as GPT, Claude, LangChain, Pinecone, or Fireworks.
• Rapid Prototyping: Ability to build quick MVPs using tools like Zapier, Make, Bubble, Streamlit, or Flowise.
• Collaboration: Proven experience working alongside engineers or agent builders to transition POCs to production.

Strong Preference For

• E-commerce Experience: Prior experience working at Marketplaces.
• Startup Experience: Early engineer (top 50) at a growth-stage startup.
• AI/LLM Projects: Demonstrated experience building production-ready solutions with GPT-4, Claude, or open-source LLMs.
• Cross-functional Roles: Experience in roles such as Product Engineer, Technical PM, Solutions Engineer, or Implementation Consultant.

Must-Have Skills

• Development: Proficient with PyCharm, IntelliJ, VS Code for coding; Postman, GraphiQL for API testing.
• AI/ML Frameworks: TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face, Scikit-learn, LangChain, LlamaIndex.
• Generative AI: Experience with Fireworks.ai, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini for automation and content generation.
• MLOps: Familiarity with MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker, Weights & Biases for model deployment and tracking.
• Data: Expertise in PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis; and vector search databases like Pinecone, Weaviate.
• Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with AWS (Lambda, ECS, RDS), GCP, Terraform, Kubernetes for cloud operations.
• Monitoring: Skilled in Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, AWS CloudWatch for system health.
• Collaboration: Proficient with Jira, Slack, Notion, Confluence for planning and communication.
• Product/Business Acumen: Ability to translate complex business requirements into functional software, understand key e-commerce metrics (conversion, AOV, margin, ROAS, inventory turns), and confidently present technical work to non-technical stakeholders.