Principal Engineer

AirAsia; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading travel and technology platform in Kuala Lumpur is seeking a Principal Engineer specializing in cloud architecture. You will design and scale the cloud infrastructure strategy for products spanning across ASEAN. The ideal candidate has 10-18 years of experience in cloud engineering and proven expertise with GCP, AWS, or Azure. Responsibilities include evolving the cloud infrastructure roadmap, collaborating with teams to drive platform alignment, and mentoring teams on cloud design patterns. Competitive perks and travel opportunities are included.

Benefits

Access to cross-regional travel perks

Fast-paced learning culture

Qualifications

• 10-18 years of backend/platform/cloud engineering experience, 2+ years in a principal role.
• Deep familiarity with cloud services and container orchestration.
• Experience in regulatory/compliance practices (SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR).

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve cloud infrastructure roadmap across GCP or multi-cloud.
• Own design and evolution of cloud-native architecture and automation.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams for alignment on platform capabilities.

Skills

Cloud architecture expertise

Problem-solving skills

Kubernetes experience

CI/CD knowledge

Infrastructure as Code proficiency

Cloud security best practices

Tools

GCP

AWS

Azure

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Job description

AirAsia MOVE

AirAsia MOVE is a dynamic ASEAN-focused budget travel platform redefining how people experience and book travel. As part of Capital A, we’re building products that span flights, hotels, e-hailing, experiences, payments, and more—powered by a tech‑first mindset and a relentless focus on customer experience. Join us in shaping the digital future of travel across the region.

About the Role

As a Principal Engineer – Cloud Architecture, you will be responsible for designing and scaling MOVE’s cloud infrastructure strategy. You will architect cloud‑native platforms, optimize cost and performance, and champion security, availability, and automation. Working closely with DevOps, Security, and Engineering squads, you’ll enable the rapid delivery of products with robust, scalable backend systems.

Core Competence

• Deep cloud, system design, and architecture expertise.
• Cross‑functional system knowledge for resilience, availability, and scale.
• Confident in architectural and design trade‑offs.
• Strong debugging and problem‑solving skills.
• Ability to own and evolve the team’s technical roadmap.
• Proficiency in AI‑driven tools and processes to boost developer productivity and automation.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the company’s cloud infrastructure roadmap across GCP, or multi cloud.
• Own the design and evolution of cloud‑native architecture, infrastructure automation, and operational excellence frameworks.
• Work cross‑functionally with Backend, SRE, and Data teams to align platform capabilities with system needs.
• Collaborate with application, data, and security teams to drive platform‑level alignment.
• Embed observability tools with OpenTelemetry into platform design.
• Drive platform engineering, developer productivity tools, CI/CD pipelines, and service mesh implementations.
• Experience in defining standards for reliability, scalability, disaster recovery, multi‑region deployments, and cost‑optimized operations.
• Architect multi‑tenant, secure, and high‑availability cloud platforms.
• Lead cloud governance, security, and compliance posture across hybrid and multi‑cloud environments.
• Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and capacity planning for critical systems.
• Mentor teams on cloud design patterns, observability, cost management, and infra‑as‑code maturity.

Required Qualifications

• 10-18 years of experience in backend/platform/cloud engineering, including 2+ years in a principal or staff‑level cloud architecture role.
• Deep experience with GCP, AWS or Azure cloud services across compute, storage, networking, and IAM.
• Proven track record with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and scaling production systems.
• Strong knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and cloud security best practices.
• Hands‑on experience with CI/CD, secret management, SRE, and platform automation.
• Strong Experience in architecting zero‑trust networks, private‑public cloud hybrid models, or FinOps frameworks.
• Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and cloud‑native API gateway architectures.
• Background in multi‑cloud architecture or cloud migration strategies.
• Hands‑on with observability tooling: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, ELK, or similar.
• Exposure to regulatory/compliance practices (SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR, etc.).

Why Join AirAsia MOVE?

• Build cloud‑native platforms that scale across ASEAN.
• Be a foundational part of our journey from monolith to distributed systems.
• Collaborate with seasoned engineering leaders and innovators.
• Access to cross‑regional travel perks and fast‑paced learning culture.
• Solve real‑world challenges that impact millions of users.