AI Engineer

Pand.ai; Johor Bahru; On-site; MYR 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Pand.ai in Johor Bahru, Malaysia seeks a Founding AI Engineer to build AI-powered products and shape the engineering approach for a new centre. You will work end-to-end from requirements to production, tackling complex problems and learning quickly.

A senior engineer from our Singapore team will be on-site to guide the early work and help establish standards. This role offers unusually broad exposure to systems, data, infrastructure and enterprise workflows, with ownership of meaningful parts of

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 2-3 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong Python proficiency and ability to build production-grade software.
• Experience with backend services or APIs that others rely on.
• Good understanding of databases, APIs and system integration.
• Able to learn unfamiliar technologies quickly and take ownership of what you build.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.
• Based in or willing to relocate to Johor Bahru.

Responsibilities

• Build AI-powered applications, backend services and APIs using Python.
• Develop RAG, semantic search, agentic and LLM-powered systems.
• Integrate AI with enterprise data, APIs, tools and business workflows.
• Build product interfaces using React and TypeScript.
• Deploy and operate applications using Docker and cloud infrastructure.
• Design, debug and improve systems for reliability, security and performance.
• Help establish the engineering practices this centre will run on.

Skills

Python

Strong problem solving

Debugging ability

Clear communication

Learning velocity

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Software Eng

Tools

Docker

React

TypeScript

APIs

Cloud infrastructure

Job description

Jora Malaysia will close on 9th September 2026. Thank you for being with us, we are cheering you on as you continue your career journey.

Responsibility
AI Engineer

Johor Bahru, Malaysia | Full-time | 2-3 Years Experience

ABOUT PAND.AI

Pand.ai builds enterprise AI systems for some of the largest organisations in Asia. Our engineers work on real production problems where AI must integrate with existing enterprise systems, operate within security and regulatory constraints, and deliver reliable outcomes at scale.

Because we work closely with our customers, our engineers don't just receive specifications. They learn to understand business problems, uncover technical constraints, and design and build complete AI systems.

A FOUNDING ROLE

We are opening our AI engineering centre in Johor Bahru, and this is one of the founding engineering hires.

That is not a title we are using loosely. You will be building the systems, and also the way this team works: how we structure our code, how we review it, how we test AI systems, how we take a problem from a customer conversation to something running in production. The engineers who join after you will work inside what you help establish.

A senior engineer from our Singapore team will be based on site with you, so you will not be figuring it out alone. But the standards this centre is known for will be set by the first few people through the door, and we are looking for someone who wants that.

THE ROLE

As a Founding AI Engineer, you will build AI-powered products and progressively learn to think and operate at the systems level, understanding how applications, models, data, infrastructure and enterprise systems fit together.

As you develop, you will take increasingly complex problems from requirements and system design through implementation, deployment and production.

You do not need to have worked on AI systems before. We are looking first for strong engineering fundamentals, problem-solving ability and learning velocity.

But this is an intellectually demanding role with a steep learning curve. Many of the problems we work on do not have established playbooks. You will regularly encounter technologies and problems you have never seen before.

Because we are a lean team, you will get unusually broad technical exposure and responsibility for your level of experience. You will learn through code review, design discussions and pairing on real production problems, while owning meaningful parts of the system yourself. You will also see the commercial side of the work, including how requirements come out of customer conversations and why enterprise constraints shape what gets built.

In return, we expect you to take ownership of your learning and develop quickly.

WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

• Build AI-powered applications, backend services and APIs using Python
• Build RAG, semantic search, agentic and LLM-powered systems
• Integrate AI with enterprise data, APIs, tools and business workflows
• Build product interfaces using React and TypeScript
• Deploy and operate applications using Docker and cloud infrastructure
• Design, debug and improve systems for reliability, security and performance
• Help establish the engineering practices this centre will run on

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related engineering or quantitative field
• 2-3 years of professional software engineering experience
• Very strong Python. This is the core requirement, and we will test it
• Experience building production software, backend services or APIs that other people depended on
• Good understanding of databases, APIs and how software systems fit together
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and debugging ability
• Able to learn unfamiliar technologies quickly and tackle problems where the answer is not immediately obvious
• Communicates clearly and takes ownership of what you build
• Based in or willing to relocate to Johor Bahru

We care less about which frameworks are on your CV and more about the strength of your fundamentals and whether you can take an unfamiliar problem, understand it quickly, reason about it clearly and figure out how to solve it.

USEFUL, BUT NOT REQUIRED

Experience with LLM applications, RAG, agentic AI, React/TypeScript, Docker, cloud infrastructure or machine learning.

WHO WILL THRIVE HERE

If you want to master a fixed technology stack and then rely on what you already know, this is probably not the role for you.

There are easier engineering jobs. This role is for someone who wants to be intellectually stretched, become a much stronger engineer, and be able to point at something and say they built it from the start.

We want to develop engineers who progress from asking:

"What should I code?"

then

"How should I build this?"

and eventually

"What is the right system to build, how should we design it, and why?"

OUR PROCESS

Shortlisted candidates will complete a Python assessment before the technical interview. We use it to see how you reason about code, not to check whether you have memorised syntax.