Senior Software Engineer (Architecture Track)

ROLE OVERVIEW

The Malaysia AI Innovation Center is the overseas R&D hub of our AI Business Group, localizing and scaling AI products across ASEAN markets (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand). We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer with strong architectural instincts to join as the technical lead of a small, fast-moving team.

Your primary focus is designing systems that let AI work reliably at scale — from structuring codebases so that AI coding agents can work in parallel without stepping on each other, to building the pipelines that validate AI-generated code before it ships. You don’t need to have done all of this before; what matters is that you have deep software engineering fundamentals and a genuine curiosity about how AI is changing the way we build software.

Equally important, you will be a hands-on practitioner of AI-assisted development yourself. We use AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) daily, and we need someone who leads by example — shaping the team’s best practices, conventions, and guardrails through real usage, not just documentation.

We don’t expect you to know everything on day one. We expect you to learn fast, build with curiosity, and grow into the Architect role as the team scales.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• System Design for AI-Driven Development: Design modular software architectures that allow multiple AI coding agents to work in parallel safely. Ensure clean boundaries between components so that concurrent AI-driven development doesn’t cause conflicts or code corruption.

• AI Development Infrastructure: Build and maintain the infrastructure that governs how AI agents operate: task management, sandboxed execution environments, error recovery, and cleanup mechanisms that keep the codebase healthy over time.

• Context & Information Strategy: Ensure AI agents have access to the right information at the right time. Design how your systems retrieve, filter, and deliver context to AI models so they produce accurate, relevant outputs.

• Integration & Security: Connect enterprise APIs, databases, and internal tools to AI agents securely. Define clear access boundaries and implement safeguards to protect sensitive data.

• Quality Assurance & Delivery: Evolve CI/CD pipelines to handle AI-generated code, including automated quality checks, structural validation, and human review gates for critical paths.

• Technical Leadership & Mentoring: Set coding standards and review practices for the team. Mentor junior and mid-level engineers on writing maintainable, AI-friendly code. Help the team make smart build-vs-buy decisions for tooling.

WHAT YOU MUST BRING

• 7+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with strong system design skills (backend, distributed systems, API design).

• Proficiency in at least one major backend language (Go, Python, TypeScript, or Java) and comfort reading code in others.

• Solid understanding of how large language models (LLMs) work at a practical level — you don’t need to train models, but you should understand token limits, context windows, and why AI outputs can be unpredictable.

• Experience using AI coding assistants (Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, or similar) in your own development workflow — not just trying them once, but making them part of how you actually work.

• Clear communication skills in English, with the ability to explain technical decisions to non-technical teammates and stakeholders.

WHAT YOU CAN LEARN HERE

We will invest in your growth in these areas. Prior exposure is a plus, not a prerequisite:

• Multi-agent orchestration patterns and frameworks for coordinating autonomous AI coding agents.

• AI-specific security practices: prompt injection defense, data sanitization for LLM access, and secure tool exposure protocols.

• Advanced CI/CD techniques for AI-generated code, including automated evaluation and structural testing.

• ASEAN regulatory environments (Malaysia PDPA, cross-border data compliance).

LANGUAGE

Proficiency in Chinese is valued for day-to-day collaboration with our China headquarters. Candidates without speaking Chinese who demonstrate strong cross-cultural communication skills are equally welcome.

WHY JOIN US

• Founding team opportunity: you will shape the architecture, engineering culture, and technical standards of a brand-new R&D center from the ground up.

• Clear career growth path: start as Senior Engineer, progress to Architect as the team scales — with real ownership, not just a title change.

• Work with frontier AI models (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini) on real industry problems in energy and education across Southeast Asia.

• AI-first team culture: every team member uses AI tools daily. You’ll be surrounded by people who are as curious about this shift as you are.

• 3-year strategic incubation: no short-term revenue pressure. Focus on building the right products and the right team.

TEAM CONTEXT

You will form the leadership duo alongside the AI-Native Product Manager, jointly building the Center’s engineering team. In Year 1, you’ll work with a compact team of 5–15 people, scaling to 25–30 by Year 2. You’ll collaborate daily with the Product Manager on translating specs into architecture, and work closely with domestic business units (AI+Energy, AI+Education) to localize mature products for ASEAN markets.