Staff Engineer

AirAsia; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading budget travel company is looking for a Staff Engineer in Kuala Lumpur to drive technical excellence and own the technology roadmap. The ideal candidate will have 8-14 years of backend development experience and proven skills in designing scalable systems. Responsibilities include mentoring developers, ensuring high availability, and making informed architectural trade-offs. Join a dynamic team and enjoy competitive compensation and career development opportunities in the fast-paced travel industry.

Benefits

Competitive compensation

Career development opportunities

Qualifications

• 8-14 years of backend development experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.
• Strong experience in building backend services and knowledge of full stack is a plus.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases.

Responsibilities

• Provide architectural oversight and review designs for services and APIs.
• Define and enforce coding standards and design patterns.
• Ensure services meet high availability and fault tolerance requirements.

Skills

Cloud architecture expertise

Backend development (Java, Spring Boot, Nodejs)

Debugging and problem-solving

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

ELK

Job description

About AirAsia MOVE

AirAsia MOVE is a leading ASEAN-focused budget travel OTA, part of the Capital A Group. We deliver customer‑centric travel solutions by combining innovation with operational excellence. Our goal is to create seamless, reliable, and delightful journeys for travelers across the region.

About the Role

We are seeking a hands‑on Staff Engineer to drive technical excellence and own the technology roadmap for key OTA services. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and operating highly available, scalable systems, mentoring developers, and collaborating closely with engineering leadership. You will help shape team culture, make architectural trade‑offs with confidence, and solve complex problems under tight deadlines.

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

Provide architectural oversight and review designs for services, APIs, and data flows.

Make informed trade‑offs between performance, reliability, and speed to market.

Define and enforce coding standards, design patterns, and best practices.

Mentor engineers on system design, code quality, and operational excellence.

Design and implement robust, scalable, and secure backend services (Java, Spring Boot, Nodejs, Golang or similar).

Ensure services meet high availability, fault tolerance, and low‑latency requirements.

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 coding, reliability, scalability, AI developer productivity.

Ensure services adhere to security, compliance, and data‑privacy standards.

Troubleshoot production issues, conduct root cause analysis, and drive continuous improvements.

Required Qualifications & Experience

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

8‑14 years of backend development experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership or senior architect role.

Strong experience in building backend services (Java, Spring Boot, or Nodejs) and experience with full stack is a plus.

Strong knowledge of relational (MySQL/PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (Redis, MongoDB) databases.

Working knowledge of frontend ecosystems (Native, React, React Native, Flutter) to ensure seamless backend–UI integration.

Strong expertise with authentication protocols (OAuth2, OIDC) and event systems (Kafka, GCP PubSub).

Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and cloud‑native API gateway architectures.

Hands‑on with observability tooling: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, ELK, or similar.

Excellent debugging skills and the ability to diagnose complex distributed system issues.

Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow engineering teams.

Experience working with e‑commerce and travel domain is a plus.

Startup experience is strongly preferred.

Why Join AirAsia MOVE?

Lead the architecture and scaling of a high‑traffic travel platform.

Work in a fast‑paced environment where your technical decisions have direct impact.

Collaborate with a diverse, high‑performing team passionate about travel and technology.

Competitive compensation and career‑development opportunities.