Head of Engineering - AI-First

Horizontal Talent; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Horizontal Talent in Malaysia is seeking a Senior/Staff Engineer to take full ownership of the live platform—writing production code, operating the system, and using AI agents to accelerate delivery.

You will own architecture, infrastructure, data security and reliability while collaborating with a small, hands-on team to push the platform forward in a fast‑growing environment.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in software engineering with ownership of production systems.
• Recent hands-on coding experience; you still want to build, not only manage.
• Experience operating production in a small team or independently: deployments, incidents, migrations and upgrades.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on development across backend, frontend, APIs and internal tools.
• AWS infrastructure, deployments, monitoring, backups, incidents and recovery.
• Architecture and technical decisions across the platform.
• Data foundations and reporting reliability.
• Security, access control, vulnerabilities and protection of client data.
• Cloud and third-party technology costs, including build-versus-buy decisions.
• Roadmap delivery, estimates, technical debt and engineering priorities.
• AI-driven automation that removes repetitive operational work.
• Engineering standards, documentation and future hiring.

Skills

JavaScript/Node.js

Production systems ownership

Cloud deployments

Tools

AWS

Job description

About Horizontal

Established since 2003 in the US, Horizontal solves complex challenges across two distinct businesses: Horizontal Digital and Horizontal Talent. We are consistently recognized for being a top workplace and one of the fastest growing private companies. Horizontal Talent specializes in staffing for IT, Digital & Creative and Business & Strategy markets. We have global offices in US, UAE, India, Malaysia and Australia.

Job Summary

A strong Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer, Founding Engineer, Technical Lead or hands-on Engineering Lead who wants full ownership and believes AI changes how small engineering teams should operate. The platform is live, the business is established, and the next phase is to make technology far more leveraged. You will take over from the current technical owner and become accountable for the full platform: application, architecture, infrastructure, data, security, reliability and delivery. This is not a management-only role. You will write production code, operate the system and use AI agents as a core part of how engineering work gets done.

Key Responsibilities

• Hands-on development across backend, frontend, APIs and internal tools.
• AWS infrastructure, deployments, monitoring, backups, incidents and recovery.
• Architecture and technical decisions across the platform.
• Data foundations and reporting reliability.
• Security, access control, vulnerabilities and protection of client data.
• Cloud and third-party technology costs, including build-versus-buy decisions.
• Roadmap delivery, estimates, technical debt and engineering priorities.
• AI-driven automation that removes repetitive operational work.
• Engineering standards, documentation and future hiring.

Requirements

• 6+ years in software engineering, including meaningful ownership of production systems.
• Recent hands-on coding experience; you still want to build, not only manage.
• Experience operating production in a small team or independently: deployments, incidents, migrations and upgrades.
• Strong JavaScript / Node.js foundations and experience with document databases or comparable technology.
• Production cloud experience, ideally AWS.
• Daily use of modern AI coding tools, with clear judgment about what to trust, test, reject or rewrite.
• Ability to explain technical decisions clearly to a non-technical CEO.

The above description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.