VP of Engineering

VP of Engineering Location: Japan or Malaysia

Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

Compensation: JPY 8,000,000-14,000,000 per year for Japan-based employment

Reports to: CEO

About The Company Our client is a rapidly growing technology-driven company building a new fresh food supply chain infrastructure across Southeast Asia .

The company operates a B2B platform connecting food producers with hotels, restaurants and other food-service businesses. Its technology integrates e-commerce with the physical supply chain, covering sourcing, procurement, collection, quality control, warehousing, logistics and last-mile delivery.

The business operates in a large and growing Southeast Asian fresh food market and works with hundreds of producers and thousands of food-service customers.

Unlike a conventional e-commerce company, the technology is deeply connected to real-world logistics and operational processes. Engineering therefore plays a critical role in improving supply-chain efficiency, scalability and customer experience.

The company has an international engineering organization, with a significant portion of the team based in Malaysia, and is actively modernizing its technology stack while adopting AI-assisted and AI-agent-based development practices .

The Role We are seeking a VP of Engineering (VPoE) to lead the engineering organization and take ownership of Execution, Delivery, Quality and Productivity .

This is a broad leadership role combining engineering management, technology execution, architecture, organizational development and operational excellence.

The successful candidate will work closely with the CEO, Product and Business teams and lead a multinational engineering organization across Japan and Malaysia.

You will have significant autonomy to shape both the technology organization and its operating model.

The ideal candidate is a strong engineering leader who can move between strategy and execution , understands modern software engineering practices, and is comfortable working in an environment where software is tightly connected to complex physical operations.

Key Responsibilities Engineering Execution & Delivery

• Translate business and product strategy into engineering roadmaps and execution plans.
• Set engineering priorities and manage delivery, resources, quality and risks.
• Establish clear visibility into engineering performance.
• Identify and resolve delivery, quality and organizational bottlenecks.
• Build a high-performing engineering organization focused on measurable business outcomes.

Engineering Quality & Productivity

• Improve the complete Software Development Lifecycle.
• Strengthen requirements, architecture, development, testing, release and incident-management processes.
• Establish and improve CI/CD, automated testing, observability and SLA/SLO practices.
• Develop engineering metrics and operating mechanisms.
• Drive productivity improvements through AI coding assistants, AI agents and emerging development technologies.

Architecture & Technology

• Lead progressive modernization of existing systems and architecture.
• Improve scalability, reliability, maintainability and infrastructure cost efficiency.
• Establish a structured approach to technical debt management.
• Balance immediate business requirements with long-term technical sustainability.
• Provide leadership on critical technical and architectural decisions.

Global Engineering Leadership

• Lead a multinational engineering organization primarily across Japan and Malaysia.
• Develop hiring strategies and organizational structures.
• Establish effective communication and development practices across countries and time zones.
• Build a high-accountability engineering culture.
• Develop engineering managers and future technical leaders.

Security & Governance

• Establish appropriate engineering controls around access, change management, releases, logging and evidence.
• Partner with relevant stakeholders on security incidents, vulnerabilities and data protection.
• Support ITGC, security, data governance and IPO-readiness initiatives where applicable.

Required Qualifications

• Strong understanding of the full Software Development Lifecycle.
• Demonstrated experience improving engineering organizations across areas such as architecture, cloud/infrastructure, CI/CD and testing.
• Experience using engineering metrics to improve delivery, quality and productivity.
• Strong experience working with Product, Business and non-engineering stakeholders.
• Ability to structure ambiguous business requirements and translate them into measurable engineering outcomes.
• Business-level or higher Japanese and English communication skills.
• Strong ownership, initiative and hands-on leadership mindset.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving environment connecting technology with complex business and physical operations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience managing multinational or remote engineering teams.
• Marketplace, e-commerce, supply chain, logistics or related product experience.
• AWS and/or GCP experience.
• Microservices, DevOps/SRE and observability experience.
• Experience with AI coding assistants, AI agents or AI-enabled engineering workflows.
• ITGC, security, data governance or IPO-readiness experience.
• Legacy-system modernization experience.
• Startup or scale-up experience.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

• Lead engineering for a business where technology directly impacts the physical world.
• Own both engineering execution and organizational strategy.
• Lead an international team across Japan and Malaysia.
• Shape a modern, AI-enabled engineering organization.
• Influence architecture, productivity, quality and engineering culture.
• Work closely with senior leadership and potentially contribute to broader company-level technology strategy.
• Opportunity to grow into a broader technology leadership position.

Employment Details Employment: Full-time, permanent

Location: Japan or Malaysia

Japan Compensation: JPY 8M-14M annually

Working Hours: 9:00 AM-6:00 PM

Workweek: Five days per week

For Japan-based employment, the position is classified as a managerial/supervisory role, and overtime and holiday-work allowances do not apply. Late-night allowances are provided in accordance with applicable regulations and company policy.

Malaysia-based compensation and employment conditions will be determined separately according to the applicable local framework.

Selection Process

• First Interview
• Second Interview
• Final Interview

The process may be adjusted depending on the candidate and circumstances.