Careers

Four roles. Nobody standing between you and the work

SYSTIQO is an applied AI and systems lab in Lucknow. We build automation for a living, so we only open roles for work that doesn't automate. This page says what each one involves, how hiring goes, and what we can't offer, so you find out now instead of in month two.

Read this ifyou're deciding whether to join something before it's safe to.

4 open rolesLucknow + remotePaid internshipYou hear back either way

01Who This Is For

If two of these are true, keep reading

A small team working together in an office

You've done the work, not just the meetings about it

Somewhere in your history is a thing you built or sold or wrote that you're still a bit proud of. That's what we want to hear about.

You're tired of shipping things nobody uses

Plenty of good people spend years on work that quietly gets switched off. Everything here goes to a client who is paying for it to matter.

You want to see the whole thing

Not your slice of a ticket. The problem, the client, the decision, the trade-off, and what happened six months later.

02What We Won't Hire For

We won't hire you to do something we'd tell a client to automate

We build automation for a living. Opening a job for work we'd automate on a client site, and letting whoever took it find that out a year later, would be a slightly dishonest way to run a company. So some roles you might expect to see here are missing on purpose. Not writing. Not coordination between two people who sit in the same room. Not junior hands hired for volume.

What's left is the part that hasn't moved: sitting across from an operations head who has stopped trusting software vendors and earning that back. Deciding what shouldn't be built. Being the person answerable when a system you designed goes wrong at 3am. Judgment, trust and responsibility — that's the whole list, and every role below is made of it.

The practical version: if a role can be handed to a model in three years, we'd rather not offer you that role today.

03Where You'd Work

Office, remote, or somewhere in between

The office

Our desk is at Levana Cyber Heights, Vibhuti Khand, Gomti Nagar. Engineering and HR are mostly here, because some conversations are just faster in person.

Remote

Sales, writing and backend can be done from anywhere. If you're good and you're not in Lucknow, that's a solvable problem, and the role listing says so.

Virtual office nearby

For people in the city who'd rather not commute daily, we keep a virtual-office arrangement close by. Come in when it helps, work from home when it doesn't.

04Open Roles

Four roles, in the order we need them

Sales is first because we can add people who build faster than we can add work to build. If you're near one of these without being exactly it, write anyway. Early teams get shaped by whoever turns up.

Sales & Client Partner

Find the companies with the problem we solve, and stay with it until it's signed.

Most of your week is conversations. Cold ones that go nowhere, warm ones that take three months, and the good ones where an operations head finally explains why their last vendor didn't work out. You qualify hard, you scope honestly, and you don't disappear after the contract.

You've sold something technical before. Software, consulting, systems work — not FMCG.
You can sit in a room with an engineer and a business head and follow both sides.
You write well. Proposals here get argued, not filled in from a template.
You're okay that we don't have case studies yet. Part of this job is creating the first ones.

Apply for this roleFull-time · Lucknow or remote · Some travel

Founding Engineer — Applied AI

Own the parts that decide whether an AI system survives contact with real users.

Retrieval, agent design, tool boundaries, evaluation, and what happens when the model is confidently wrong. You'll own systems from the first conversation to production, and you'll be the one explaining the design to a client who is paying for it.

You've shipped something with an LLM in it that real people used, and you can tell us what broke.
Solid Python or TypeScript, and a real understanding of how the data reaches the model.
You treat evaluation as engineering rather than as a demo.
You're roughly as sceptical about AI as this work deserves.

Apply for this roleFull-time · Lucknow · Mostly on-site

Founding Engineer — Backend & Platform

Build the half that decides whether any of it is still standing in two years.

Services, data pipelines, and the integration work of making six existing systems agree with each other. Also the runbook the client's own team will be reading at 3am, which matters more than most people admit.

You've built and operated backends that other people depended on.
Comfortable across databases, queues, APIs and whatever cloud they sit on.
You write documentation unprompted, because you've been the person who needed it.
You'd rather delete a service than add one.

Apply for this roleFull-time · Lucknow or remote

Engineering Intern

A two-year bet on a person, not a cheap pair of hands.

AI already does the volume work interns used to be hired for, so this isn't that. This is us backing someone early because we think they'll be running engagements in two years. Real client work from the first month, every line reviewed by someone senior, and you'll be asked to defend your choices out loud.

Final-year student, recent graduate, or someone switching into engineering.
One thing you built that you can walk us through properly. College projects count if you actually built them.
You're fine being corrected often, and in detail.

Apply for this role6 months · Lucknow · Paid · Can convert to full-time

05How Hiring Works

Six steps, and you always hear back

Start to finish this takes about three weeks if we're both quick. Every stage below is what actually happens, including the part where we pay you for your time.

You write to us

One email to hello@systiqo.com with the role in the subject. Tell us what you've done and attach something we can look at — code, a system you designed, a piece you wrote, a deal you closed. Skip the cover letter.

We read it and reply

Within five working days, either way. If it's a no, you'll get a no rather than silence. If we're unsure, we'll ask you something rather than guess.

A 45-minute call

Mostly about what you've built and what you'd want to build here. You should be asking as much as we are — if you leave that call without having interrogated us, one of us has done this badly.

A piece of real work

A problem close to what the job actually involves. If it takes more than two hours, we pay you for it. We don't send unpaid take-homes that quietly turn into free work.

A conversation with the founder

No panel, no whiteboard performance. A long conversation about how you think, what you want in three years, and whether this is genuinely the right place for that.

Offer, in writing

Numbers, role, expectations and start date on paper. You get time to think about it and to negotiate. We won't pressure you with an exploding deadline.

06The Trade

What we can offer, and what we can't

Every job is a trade. Here is ours, written down, so you can decide before you spend a month finding out.

What you get

Real ownership of whole systems, not tickets from a backlog.
Direct access to the founder every day, and to every decision.
Problems that are actually hard, for clients who are actually paying.
Flexible location for most roles, and honesty about which ones need you in the room.
A paid internship, not the unpaid kind.
An answer either way, always.

What we can't give you

Salaries that match a funded startup or a large services firm. We'll tell you the number early rather than waste your time.
A brand name on your CV that opens doors on its own. Not yet.
A ready-made process to slot into. You'd be helping write it.
Certainty. We're early, and pretending otherwise would be the wrong start.

07Nothing Fits?

Write to us anyway

If none of these is quite you but you could do work we'd need, tell us what you'd want to own here and show us one thing you've made. These get read by a person, not filtered by software.

Send an open application