Lead Software Engineer, Backend - Business Platform

Grab; Jakarta Pusat; On-site; IDR 700,000,000 - 900,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Term Life Insurance

Medical Insurance

GrabFlex benefits

Parental and Birthday leave

LASA volunteering leave

Grabber Assistance Programme

FlexWork differentiated hours

Job summary

Grab is seeking a seasoned Backend Engineer to own scalable services across Indonesia. Design, build, and operate distributed microservices, collaborating with product and data teams to deliver reliable merchant and user features.

The role requires 8+ years of backend experience, strong Python/Go skills, hands-on cloud and AI tooling, and a mindset of ownership and scalable problem solving. Join a distributed team across Indonesia and Singapore with flexible hours, comprehensive insurance, and a

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Expertise in Python and/or Go.
• Experience designing distributed backend architectures and microservices.
• Strong experience with RESTful APIs and gRPC.
• Hands-on with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP or Azure) and CI/CD.
• Knowledge of Generative AI workflows and related tooling.
• Familiarity with RAG pipelines and vector databases.
• Mentorship or leadership experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• End-to-end ownership: design, build, and operate high-quality systems.
• Apply architectural patterns and monitor post-deployment health.
• Collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders across product lifecycles.
• Drive process improvements to boost team efficiency.
• Mentor junior engineers and promote a culture of learning.

Skills

Python

Go

Distributed backends

RESTful APIs

gRPC

System design

Cloud platforms

CI/CD

Generative AI

RAG pipelines

Tools

Redis

Kafka

RabbitMQ

gRPC tooling

Job description

About Grab and our workplace

Grab is Southeast Asia's leading superapp. From getting your favourite meals delivered to helping you manage your finances and getting around town hassle-free, we've got your back with everything. In Grab, purpose gives us joy and habits build excellence, while harnessing the power of Technology and AI to deliver the mission of driving Southeast Asia forward by economically empowering everyone, with heart, hunger, honour, and humility.

Get to know the Team

The Business Platform team at Grab focuses on empowering a diverse range of Southeast Asian merchants-from local street stalls to international franchises-by providing them with professional tools via the GrabMerchant Super App and Portal. By leveraging data from billions of monthly transactions, the team delivers insights and innovative features that enhance efficiency and customer engagement, effectively leveling the playing field for smaller businesses. Operating as a distributed team across Indonesia and Singapore, they prioritize stability and quality to directly impact merchant profitability and ensure that business owners can focus on their core operations.

Get to know the role

We are seeking talented & passionate Engineers to join our team, you will have opportunities to work on multiple backend services as well as participating in merchant immersions, talking directly to the end-users, identifying their challenges and how we can help them in their work life. It is very important that our team members to identify problems, and have the right mindset and skill sets to solve them.

The Day-to-Day Activities

• End-to-End System Ownership: Independently designs, builds, and operates high-quality software systems, ensuring they are secure, reliable, maintainable, and rigorously tested.
• Architectural & Operational Excellence: Applies advanced architectural patterns and infrastructure best practices, while maintaining accountability for post-deployment monitoring and system health.
• Strategic Stakeholder Partnership: Collaborates effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, actively contributing to the entire product lifecycle from initial design to final rollout.
• Process Optimization: Proactively identifies and implements improvements to team workflows and engineering processes to enhance overall efficiency and delivery.
• Mentorship & Team Growth: Acts as a senior leader by mentoring junior engineers and fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional development within the team.

What Essential Skills You Will Need

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with strong hands-on proficiency in Python and/or Go.
• Deep expertise in designing, building, and maintaining distributed backend architectures and microservices.
• Proven track record with core backend infrastructure, including relational and NoSQL databases, caching layers (e.g., Redis), and message brokers/event streaming (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Strong expertise in RESTful API design, contract management, and service-to-service communication (e.g., gRPC).
• Solid foundation in system design, high-availability architecture, and performance optimization at scale.
• Practical experience deploying and managing services on modern cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), adhering to CI/CD and DevOps best practices.
• Proactive learner with strong ownership, keeping pace with emerging backend patterns and AI technologies.
• Hands-on experience building Generative AI applications or AI Agent workflows using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or LlamaIndex.
• Practical knowledge of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines and vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus, Qdrant, pgvector).

Life at Grab

We care about your well-being at Grab, here are some of the global benefits we offer:

• We have your back with Term Life Insurance and comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• With GrabFlex, create a benefits package that suits your needs and aspirations.
• Celebrate moments that matter in life with loved ones through Parental and Birthday leave, and give back to your communities through Love-all-Serve-all (LASA) volunteering leave
• We have a confidential Grabber Assistance Programme to guide and uplift you and your loved ones through life's challenges.
• Balancing personal commitments and life's demands are made easier with our FlexWork arrangements such as differentiated hours

What We Stand For At Grab

We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace that provides equal opportunity for Grabbers to grow and perform at their best. We consider all candidates fairly and equally regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, age, gender, family commitments, physical and mental impairments or disabilities, and other attributes that make them unique.