Senior Backend Engineer - Go/PHP, AI-Driven Systems (Bilingual: CN/EN) (A252801)

AI Rudder; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning & Development

Performance reviews

Global exposure

Meaningful impact

Ownership & Autonomy

Team events

Job summary

AI Rudder, a conversational AI company, is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer in Kuala Lumpur. You will drive end-to-end backend work for Go or PHP, building scalable, high-availability services and coordinating with cross-functional teams.

The role emphasizes ownership, architectural decision-making, and AI-driven system enhancements. Join a globally distributed team focused on human-centric AI solutions, with opportunities for growth, learning, and direct impact on product quality and

Qualifications

• 3+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Strong production-level expertise in Go or PHP.
• Experience designing and troubleshooting scalable distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Own a complete business or technical domain from definition to launch and retrospective.
• Design scalable, highly available backend systems with clear API boundaries.
• Collaborate with product, security, and operations to ensure reliable delivery.

Skills

Go

PHP

Distributed systems

High concurrency

Job description

AI Rudder is a conversational AI company on a mission to transform how businesses communicate with their customers — across voice and digital channels that feel genuinely human.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Singapore, we're building technologies that bridge languages, enhance understanding, and enable meaningful human–machine communication at scale.

Today, we serve 500+ enterprise clients globally processing 50 million calls daily and having delivered more than 8 billion calls to date.

Most recently, we have raised $50M in a Series B fundraising from leading global investors including Tiger Global, Peak XV Partners, and Cathay Innovation.

How We Work:

AI-first:

AI isn't a tool we reach for. It's the default we start from. Every team, every workflow: AI-first.

Global Collaboration:

We operate globally and work as one team. Distance is a logistics problem, not a cultural one. We build the habits that make distributed teams actually work

Communication Principle

Simple, Trust, Transparent. We remove unnecessary complexity so people can focus on what matters most.

What We Offer

• Learning & Development: Continuous learning through real projects, knowledge sharing session, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Performance Recognition: Regular performance reviews, feedback, and opportunities for career progression.
• Global Exposure: Collaborate with international teams, global rotations, and work with global enterprise customers.
• Meaningful Impact: Build AI solutions that create real value for businesses around the world.
• Ownership & Autonomy: Freedom to take initiative and drive outcomes.
• Team Engagement: Team Building, Local & Global Gatherings & Local Events Celebration

AI Rudder is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and applicants.

Office Location

Level 7, Vertical Corporate Tower B. Avenue 10, The Vertical. No. 8. Jalan Kerinchi, Bangsar South City 59200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Work arrangement

On-Site

As a Senior Backend Engineer - Go/PHP, AI-Driven Systems, you will be at the forefront of driving business initiatives, working closely with cross-functional teams to understand complex business challenges and develop scalable solutions that address operational and technical needs. You will own end-to-end problem-solving journeys, from identifying opportunities and defining requirements to supporting implementation, measuring outcomes, and continuously improving solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Own a complete business or technical domain from problem definition and architecture through prototype, implementation, launch, measurement, and retrospective.
• Break down complex, ambiguous problems into cohesive, loosely coupled, independently testable workstreams that can be executed in parallel by people and AI agents.
• Design and evolve highly available, scalable, maintainable systems with clear service boundaries, API and event contracts, data flows, state machines, and failure-handling strategies.
• Make explicit trade-offs across latency, performance, availability, security, cost, delivery speed, and long-term evolution.
• Design for retries, timeouts, idempotency, cancellation, compensation, version compatibility, observability, auditability, graceful degradation, and human intervention.
• Use AI across research, architecture, coding, testing, debugging, documentation, and operational analysis while verifying critical outputs rather than accepting them blindly.
• Coordinate collaboration across product, engineering, quality, operations, security, and business teams; surface assumptions, risks, unknowns, and dependencies early.
• Move effectively across related projects, rapidly understand unfamiliar business flows and codebases, and identify the few decisions that matter most.
• Turn personal practices into reusable tools, skills, templates, engineering standards, and playbooks that help the wider team move faster.
• 3+ years of backend software engineering experience, with strong production-level expertise in Go or PHP and hands-on experience designing, building, and troubleshooting scalable, distributed, high-concurrency, and highly available systems.- Strong expertise in at least one language: You must be highly proficient in either Go or PHP and able to design, implement, review, and troubleshoot production systems at code level. Expertise in both is welcome but not required.
• Strong expertise in at least one language: You must be highly proficient in either Go or PHP and able to design, implement, review, and troubleshoot production systems at code level. Expertise in both is welcome but not required.
• Architecture that reaches production: You have delivered complex systems involving distributed services, high concurrency, high availability, observability, disaster recovery, security, and controlled evolution.
• Depth and breadth: You have deep knowledge in at least one or two relevant areas—such as real-time media, speech systems, LLM inference, distributed systems, scheduling, cloud platforms, or reliability engineering—and enough breadth to make end-to-end decisions.
• Judgement under uncertainty: You can make high-quality decisions when information is incomplete, goals conflict, or resources are limited, and you can explain the trade-offs and likely second-order effects.
• Problem decomposition: You can turn a large, unclear goal into well-bounded modules, interfaces, milestones, and verification steps.
• Ownership and initiative: You do not wait for step-by-step instructions. You clarify assumptions, close information gaps, identify risks, coordinate resources, and keep the work moving until the outcome is achieved.
• Technical taste: You prefer simple, clear, maintainable designs and know how to avoid both short-term patchwork and premature platform building.
• Communication: You can lead architecture reviews, make complex topics understandable to different audiences, and create documents that allow others to continue the work independently.
• Mandarin: Fluent spoken Mandarin is required because this role regularly leads requirement discussions, architecture reviews, and delivery coordination with Mandarin-speaking product, engineering, and business stakeholders.
• English: Professional working proficiency is required for Malaysia-based collaboration, regional communication, and technical documentation.