The posting
Location: All India. Based in Bengaluru, with project sites across the country and extensive travel. Employment: Full-time Function: AgOps, working closely with Agronomy and Supply Chain Reports to: Head AgOps
About FinAgra FinAgra is building a new model for commercial agriculture in emerging markets. We combine financing, agronomy, technology, and farm operations to turn underperforming farmland into professionally managed, productive farming businesses.
About the Role
FinAgra is looking for a mechanisation engineer to plan and run machinery deployment end to end across our project sites, covering horticulture and agri crops. That means every mechanised operation in the crop calendar, from land preparation through sowing, weed management, earthing up and plant protection to harvest and post-harvest handling.
This is a hands-on technical role. You will decide which machines and implements each operation needs, match them to the tractor power and field conditions available, schedule their use across sites, keep them running, and train REPs and operators to use them properly. Quotations, negotiation and supplier selection sit with the supply chain team, with whom you will work closely.
What You Will Do
Mechanisation planning
- Build the mechanisation plan for each project site: the full sequence of machine operations for the crop and season, the implements required at each stage, and the field capacity and timing each one needs.
- Cover the full crop cycle end to end, including ploughing, harrowing, rotavation, levelling, ridging and bed forming, sowing and planting, inter-cultivation and weed management, earthing up, fertiliser application, plant protection spraying, harvesting, digging and threshing, and post-harvest handling.
- Assess the machinery already available at or around each site, whether owned by the REP, hired locally or available through custom hiring centres, and establish what can be used, what needs to be brought in and what should be added to the fleet.
- Match implements correctly to available tractor power and field conditions: horsepower, PTO speed, hitch category, hydraulic capacity, tyre and ground-pressure considerations, soil type and moisture.
- Recommend mechanisation options that reduce labour dependence and cost per acre, and support Total Cost of Ownership and Cost Benefit Analysis calculations, including cost per acre or per hour and expected payback.
Deployment and scheduling
- Schedule machine and operator deployment across multiple sites so that time-critical operations such as sowing, spraying and harvest happen in their window.
- Track machine utilisation, fuel consumption, downtime and output per hour, and use the data to improve deployment in the following season.
- Set operating standards and SOPs for each operation, including depth, speed, spacing, calibration and quality of finish, and check that work in the field meets them.
Maintenance, repair and troubleshooting
- Own preventive maintenance for all machinery in use: service schedules, lubrication, filters, hydraulics, wear parts and season-start and season-end overhauls.
- Diagnose breakdowns and performance problems across tractors, implements, pumps, sprayers and harvesting equipment, and identify the root cause rather than the symptom.
- Carry out repairs directly where practical, and where a repair needs a workshop or specialist, mobilise and supervise local mechanics, dealer service teams and fabricators to get the machine back into the field quickly.
- Build and maintain a network of local mechanics, workshops, spare-part dealers and custom hiring operators around each project cluster, and keep a working inventory of critical spares and wear parts.
- Keep machine-wise records of service history, repairs, spares consumed and downtime, using company digital tools and ERP.
Technical specification and evaluation
- Draft the technical and functional specification for machines and implements to be added, in a form the supply chain team can take to market.
- Assess supplier proposals on technical merit against that specification, flag gaps and deviations, and provide a written technical recommendation.
- Inspect machines on delivery against the approved specification, and supervise commissioning and handover.
- Coordinate closely with the supply chain team, which owns quotations, negotiation and supplier selection.
Training and field support
- Train REPs, operators and field teams on correct operation, calibration, daily checks and routine maintenance, and on safe working practices around machinery.
- Work with the Agronomy team so that mechanised operations fit the crop protocol, and with Program Management on machine utilisation and cost reporting.
What We Are Looking For
Required
- B.Tech or B.E. in Agricultural Engineering, Farm Machinery and Power, Mechanical Engineering, or an equivalent discipline.
- 4-8 years of hands-on experience planning and running farm mechanisation at comparable scale, across multiple sites or farmer clusters rather than a single small holding.
- Thorough working knowledge of agricultural machinery and implements: tractors and power tillers, mould board and disc ploughs, cultivators, disc harrows, rotavators, laser levellers, ridgers and bed formers, seed drills, planters and transplanters, power weeders and inter-cultivators, fertiliser spreaders, knapsack, boom and air-assisted sprayers, combine harvesters, diggers, threshers, balers and post-harvest cleaning and grading equipment.
- Practical repair and troubleshooting ability. You can diagnose and fix common faults in engines, transmissions, hydraulics, PTO drives, sprayer systems and implement wear points yourself, and you know when and how to route a job to a workshop or specialist instead.
- Ability to operate a tractor and common implements competently, and to demonstrate correct operation to an operator in the field.
- Understanding of farm mechanisation economics: cost per acre and per hour, custom hiring rates, utilisation, depreciation and replacement decisions.
- Familiarity with the product ranges and technical specifications of major tractor and implement OEMs, and the ability to compare machines on technical merit.
- Comfort with spreadsheets and digital record-keeping, and with ERP or field data tools.
Preferred
- Experience mechanising horticulture, plantation or high-value field crops, where implements often need adaptation to bed geometry and row spacing.
- Exposure to precision agriculture and newer equipment: drone spraying, GPS-guided operations, telematics and machine monitoring.
- Experience running or working with a custom hiring centre or farm machinery service operation.
- Experience with fabrication or modification of implements to suit local field conditions.
- Familiarity with government farm mechanisation schemes and subsidy norms, and the technical documentation they require.
Who Will Thrive in This Role
You are an engineer who is comfortable in the workshop and in the field. You would rather open a gearbox than send an email about it, and you understand that a harvester standing idle in the wrong week costs more than the repair ever will.
You are organised enough to plan a season of machine deployment across dispersed sites, practical enough to fix what breaks or find the person who can, and consistent enough to keep records that make the next season cheaper than the last.
Other Requirements
- Willingness to travel extensively and spend the majority of working time at project sites anywhere in India.
- Valid driving licence (four-wheeler preferred).
