AI Tech Lead

Finago; Kuala Lumpur; Hybrid; MYR 240,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexitime

Hybrid setup

Healthcare coverage

Monthly allowance

Wellness perks

Job summary

Finago is hiring an AI Tech Lead to steer a new AI engineering team in Kuala Lumpur. You will translate architectural vision into scalable, production‑ready GenAI capabilities across core products, while staying hands‑on and writing code alongside the team.

You’ll shape engineering standards and lead the team to deliver reliable, secure GenAI features. You’ll collaborate with Nordic offices, mentor engineers, and participate in hiring as the team grows.

Qualifications

• Proven production GenAI experience: designed, built and shipped LLM/GenAI-based features to production with real users.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience in backend, data or ML engineering roles.
• Strong system design skills: production-grade services, APIs and data flows within a wider architecture.
• Fluent English with ability to communicate technical choices to engineers and business stakeholders.
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Translate target architecture into concrete designs and implementation plans for the team.
• Stay hands-on: design, build and ship LLM-powered features with the team.
• Define and uphold engineering standards for code review, testing, CI/CD and evaluation of GenAI features.
• Mentor and grow AI engineers through pairing and design reviews.
• Break product goals into technical plans and help prioritize work.
• Ensure GenAI features are reliable, secure, privacy‑compliant and cost-efficient.

Skills

GenAI production

Python

System design

CI/CD

Team leadership

Tools

Databricks

Azure

LangChain

REST APIs

GitHub

SQL

Job description

Do you thrive on building high‑quality, scalable AI solutions, guiding technical decisions, and shaping the future of AI‑powered products used by thousands of people every day?

At Finago,we’resetting a new standard for financial & human resources software across the Nordics. Our mission? To become the most customer‑centric business software company out there! We’renow looking for an AI Tech Leadto lead our new AI engineering team in Kuala Lumpur and help bring intelligent workflows into the daily routines of thousands of Nordic businesses.

Your mission?

Our software is a critical infrastructure for small and medium businesses across the Nordics. Every time we automate a routine task or surface the right information at the right moment, a business owner gets time back and a clearer view of their operations.AI playsa central rolein this transformation. Not as a novelty, but as a practical way to remove repetitive work and support better decisions.

As the AI Tech Lead, you will be the technical anchor of our new AI engineering team in Kuala Lumpur. Working closely with our broader AI organization in Finland, you’ll help translate our architectural vision into scalable, production‑ready GenAI capabilities across our core products. You will lead the team’s day‑to‑day technical work, while staying hands‑on, writing code and solving the hardest problems alongside the team. You make sure what we ship is reliable, measurable and maintainable before it reaches our customers. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role for someone who has already taken GenAI to production and wants to help a team do it well.

Your key tasks and responsibilities include:

• Translating the target architecture, defined together with our AI Architect, into concrete technical designs and implementation plans for the team, and feeding back what you learn from building.
• Staying hands‑on: designing, building and shipping LLM‑powered features together with the team.
• Defining and upholding engineering standards for code review, testing, CI/CD, and how we evaluate GenAI features before release.
• Mentoring and growing the AI Engineers in the team through pairing, design reviews and constructive feedback.
• Breaking product goals down into technical plans, estimating realistically and helping the team prioritize.
• Being responsible for the quality of what the team ships: GenAI features that are reliable, secure, privacy‑compliant and cost‑efficient by design.
• Taking part in hiring and onboarding new team members as the team grows.

You’ll get to join our growing 50 person Finago KL team and lead a new team of AI Engineers. You'll get to work in collaboration with your colleagues in Finago's Nordic offices and partner closely with our AI Architect, Head of Product, Product Manager, Designers, and Developers across our AI organization.This is a full‑time and permanent position, and the preferred start date is in February, 2027.

Working at Finago has been a really positive experience for me. The company truly respects work‑life balance through hybrid work and flexible hours. There is a strong culture of trust with no micromanaging, along with great support from my manager and colleagues. I’ve also really enjoyed the exposure to Nordic work culture. Overall, this is a motivating place to build a long‑term career. - Bong Kang Zheng, Senior Software Developer

Ready to make an impact?

You’ll thrive in this role if you enjoy making a team better, not just shipping your own work. You combine deep hands‑on GenAI experience with sound design judgment, and you know from experience what it takes to make LLM‑based systems reliable outside a demo. You explain technical trade‑offs clearly to engineers and non‑technical stakeholders alike, give honest and constructive feedback, and take ownership of outcomes. You value a coherent architecture and know when to follow it, when to challenge it, and how to raise questions early. This is a technical leadership role, not a line management role, so formal people‑management experience is not required.

What we require from you:

• Proven production GenAI experience: you have designed, built and shipped LLM/GenAI‑based products or features to production with real users, and owned them after launch.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience in backend, data or ML engineering, or similar roles.
• Strong system design skills: you can design production‑grade services, APIs and data flows within a wider architecture, and spot when that architecture needs to evolve.
• Strong Python and a high bar for engineering practices: testing, code review, CI/CD and maintainable services.
• Deep GenAI know‑how: RAG, tool calling and agentic workflows, evals and guardrails, and managing hallucinations, latency and cost in production.
• Clear communication: you can explain technical choices and trade‑offs to both engineers and business stakeholders.
• Fluent English, as you’ll work daily with colleagues across the Nordics

It’s a plus if you’ve held a tech lead or lead engineer role before, or have experience with fine‑tuning or classical ML, financial or HR data, or B2B SaaS products.

This roleisn’ttied to specific technologies, but we want you to know the toolsyou’llencounter:

• Pythonasour main language
• REST APIsfor integrating AI capabilities into our products and services
• LangChainand modern LLM tooling for building intelligent applications
• Databricksfor pipelines, experimentation, and model development
• Azurefor cloud infrastructure and operations
• SQLas part of our data foundation
• GitHubfor collaboration and CI/CD

You don’t need experience with every tool on this list. What matters is that you have taken GenAI to production and can help a team do the same.

What’s in it for you?

Experience Nordic work culture: Be part of a low‑hierarchy, high‑trust environment where autonomy, transparency, and work‑life balance are truly practiced, not just promised. You can enjoy flexitime with a 40‑hour work week and a hybrid setup, currently three days in the office and two days working from home.

Feel supported in and out of work: Benefit from comprehensive healthcare coverage including specialist care and family coverage, a monthly allowance, and wellness perks such as recreational club activities that support your wellbeing beyond work.

Make a meaningful impact: Every day, tens of thousands of customers rely on us to keep their businesses running. And we show up—not only for our customers, but for the planet. According to the EcoVadis assessment, we are among the top 5% of the world’s most sustainable companies.

Make a meaningful impact: Every day, tens of thousands of customers rely on us to keep their businesses running. We show up not only for our customers, but also for the planet, and we are proud to be ranked in the top 15% of the most sustainable companies in the world.

Here’s how our recruitment process goes:

1. Initial Screening: getting to know each other better
2. First Interview: a deep dive into your technical expertise with our Head of AI and AI Architect
3. Second Interview: a competence interview, including an AON assessment with our HR
4. Third Interview: final conversation with our Director of Engineering at the KL office
5. Offer & Contract: time to make it official

Please note: To ensure compliant and secure processing of personal data, we don’t accept or process any applications via email. All applications must be submitted through our recruitment portal. This role is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and is open to Malaysian citizens and permanent residents, as required by local work visa and compliance regulations.