API Engineer

Discovered MENA; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 400,000 - 560,000; Full time

Job summary

Discovered MENA is seeking an API Engineer in Abu Dhabi to design, build and scale APIs and platform services powering AI agents across the organization. This role demands ownership from problem framing to production with a strong emphasis on security, compliance and governance in a regulated financial services environment.

The ideal candidate has hands-on experience delivering production-grade AI agents, is comfortable with cloud-native platforms and has a track record of mentoring engineers

Qualifications

• Proven background in financial services or banking.
• Understanding security, governance and regulatory context for AI systems.
• Experience building production-grade AI agent platforms.
• Ability to design, implement and scale APIs and platform services.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain secure, scalable APIs and platform services.
• Architect agent-based systems across their full lifecycle.
• Identify and resolve core agent failure modes and context management.
• Build reusable platform capabilities instead of one-off solutions.
• Design and run real-world A/B tests of AI features at scale.
• Work with product, data science, risk, security and compliance.
• Own end-to-end delivery from problem to production.
• Anchor technical direction and mentor engineers.
• Contribute to team growth and act as tech lead when needed.

Skills

API design

RESTful APIs

Event-driven design

Authentication & authorization

Versioning

Observability

Performance optimization

Cloud-native

Containerisation

Agent orchestration

Retrieval tooling

Evaluation tooling

LLMs knowledge

ML foundations

Regulatory awareness

Stakeholder collaboration

Job description

Client: Leading financial services organisation in Abu Dhabi

About the Role

Our client, a leading financial services organisation in Abu Dhabi, is building production-grade AI and agent capabilities that sit at the core of how the business operates. They are looking for an API Engineer to design, build and scale the APIs and platform services that power these capabilities across the organisation.

This is not a role for someone who has built a handful of isolated proofs of concept. The successful candidate will have lived through the full lifecycle of AI agents in a regulated environment, understands where they break, and can engineer reusable, scalable platforms that multiple teams and products can build on. They will operate with a high degree of autonomy, take ownership of problems end to end, and help set the technical direction.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain secure, scalable APIs and platform services that expose LLM, agent and ML capabilities to internal teams and business applications
• Architect agent-based systems across their full lifecycle: design, orchestration, tool integration, evaluation, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement
• Identify and resolve core agent failure modes, including reliability, hallucination, latency, cost, tool-calling errors and context management, and embed those lessons into the platform
• Build multi-dimensional, reusable capabilities and shared infrastructure rather than one-off solutions
• Design and run real-world A/B tests and controlled rollouts of AI features at scale, using results to drive technical decisions
• Work with product, data science, risk, security and compliance stakeholders to ensure solutions meet the standards expected in banking
• Own delivery end to end, from ambiguous problem statement through to production, making independent decisions and managing trade-offs
• Anchor technical direction, set engineering standards and mentor other engineers
• Contribute to team growth and, where appropriate, step into tech lead responsibilities, guiding delivery across a team

Domain background

• Proven background in financial services or banking, with a strong understanding of the security, governance and regulatory context in which AI systems must operate

AI and agent architecture depth

• Extensive, hands-on experience across the entire lifecycle of AI agents in production, not surface-level familiarity
• Demonstrable understanding of where agents fail and the practical techniques used to make them robust
• Strong working knowledge of LLMs and core machine learning foundations

Platform engineering at scale

• Track record of building production-grade, scalable platforms and capabilities, as opposed to isolated or experimental projects
• Strong API design and engineering skills (RESTful and event-driven patterns, authentication and authorisation, versioning, observability and performance)
• Experience deploying and experimenting with AI systems at scale, including live A/B testing

Ownership and autonomy

• Ability to work beyond rigid task definitions, handle ambiguity and make sound decisions independently
• Evidence of anchoring technical direction on previous teams or programmes

Leadership potential

• Proven ability, or a clear trajectory, to expand into a tech lead or management role, guiding teams and owning end-to-end delivery
• Experience with cloud-native and containerised environments
• Familiarity with agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval and evaluation tooling
• Experience working with UAE or wider GCC regulatory and data-residency requirements
• Prior experience leading or mentoring engineers