Engineering Manager – People & Tech Lead

MerchantSpring; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 300,000 - 550,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia seeks a proven engineering leader to own and evolve an API-first data platform. You will lead 11 engineers across ETL, API and AI/MCP squads, translate business goals into a tech roadmap, optimize database and infrastructure costs, and scale the platform across multiple channels.

You will mentor teams, set delivery standards and collaborate with executives to align technical strategy with company growth.

Qualifications

• Leadership of a multi-squad engineering team (8–15 engineers) with delivery accountability.
• Experience reducing database and infrastructure costs at scale.
• Strong credibility in data and platform engineering.
• Experience with relational and document databases including Postgres and MongoDB.
• Experience with time-series data at scale and API platform design.

Responsibilities

• Take full ownership of the engineering function and lead its evolution into a true API-first data platform.
• Lead 11 engineers across ETL, API and AI/MCP squads.
• Translate business goals into a technical roadmap and set direction across squads.
• Scale the API and data platform across more channels, volume and external builders.
• Own platform unit economics and reduce database and infrastructure costs.
• Hire, mentor and grow engineers; set delivery standards and best practices.
• Bridge Engineering with Sales and Client Success to incorporate feedback into the roadmap.
• Engage the CEO on technical strategy.

Skills

People-First Leadership

Team Development

Proactive Team Cohesion

Customer-Focused Prioritization

Resilience in Ambiguity

Tools

Node

TypeScript

AWS

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

TimescaleDB

API Platform Design

Job description

• Take full ownership of the engineering function and lead its evolution into a true API-first data platform
• Lead 11 engineers across ETL, API and AI/MCP squads
• Report to the CEO
• Set the technical vision, architecture and engineering culture
• Translate business goals into a technical roadmap and set direction across squads
• Scale the API and data platform across more channels, volume and external builders
• Own platform unit economics and reduce database and infrastructure costs
• Optimise TimescaleDB compression, retention and continuous aggregates
• Optimise Postgres queries, indexes and right-sizing
• Manage MongoDB indexing and sharding
• Own data integrity, incident practices and resilience for financially accurate data
• Hire, mentor and grow engineers
• Set delivery standards and best practices from documentation through deployment
• Provide oversight and guidance to junior AI/MCP, DevOps and infrastructure teams
• Bridge Engineering with Sales and Client Success to incorporate feedback, escalations and market signals into the roadmap
• Engage the CEO and co-founder proactively on technical strategy

Requirements

• Node, TypeScript and AWS
• Deep, current credibility in data and platform engineering
• Experience with relational and document databases, including Postgres and MongoDB
• Experience with time-series data at scale
• Experience in API platform design
• Led a team of roughly 8 to 15 engineers
• Remain close to architecture and code when it matters
• Track record of optimising and reducing database and infrastructure costs at scale
• People-first leadership and active interest in team development
• End-to-end accountability and decisive incident response
• Proactive team cohesion and culture building
• Pragmatic, data-driven approach with rigorous technical trade-off analysis
• Customer-focused technical prioritisation
• Resilience managing competing priorities and ambiguity
• Experience scaling a multi-tenant, high-volume data and API platform through rapid growth
• Exposure to marketplaces, e-commerce or the Amazon SP-API ecosystem is valuable but not required
• Ability to travel to Australia personally and with a valid visa

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in leading engineering teams and driving the evolution of API-first data platforms, with a strong focus on optimizing database performance and cost management. Capable of translating business objectives into technical roadmaps while fostering a people-first leadership culture.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Node
• TypeScript
• AWS
• Postgres
• MongoDB

Hard Skills

• API Platform Design
• Data Engineering
• Database Optimization
• Time-Series Data Management
• Incident Response

Soft Skills

• People-First Leadership
• Team Development
• Proactive Team Cohesion
• Customer-Focused Prioritization
• Resilience in Ambiguity

Industry Keywords

• E-Commerce
• Marketplace
• Amazon SP-API

Tools & Technologies

• TimescaleDB
• MongoDB
• Postgres