AI Engineer

NCS; Singapore; On-site; SGD 75,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech advisory firm in Singapore seeks a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and operate production-grade agentic and GenAI systems. You will lead projects, ship robust services, and collaborate with product and data teams. Ideal candidates have over 6 years in software engineering, strong language proficiency in Python or Java, and hands-on experience with Kubernetes and CI/CD. Join a dynamic environment that values innovation and teamwork, offering competitive compensation and professional development opportunities.

Benefits

Competitive compensation

Professional development support

Collaborative environment

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 1+ year leading small projects.
• Strong in one and comfortable in a second systems language.
• Hands-on with containers, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design multi-agent systems and expose them via REST/gRPC APIs.
• Implement ingestion pipelines for docs and handle metadata governance.
• Build evaluation harnesses and add drift detection for conversational systems.

Skills

Strong in one systems language (Python / TypeScript / Go / Java)

Hands-on with containers and Kubernetes

Practical LLM experience

Data skills (designing schemas, SQL)

Testing mindset

Security basics

Education

6+ years in software engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

Job description

What will you do:

Design, build, and operate production-grade agentic and GenAI systems—end to end. You’ll ship services (not just notebooks): robust APIs, reusable components, and secure pipelines that connect LLMs, tools, knowledge, and enterprise systems. You’ll pair strong software engineering with modern AI practices (RAG, agent orchestration, policy chains, evals) to deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.

1. Agent & Application Engineering

• Design multi-agent systems (MAS) with planning, tool-use, and delegation (e.g., LangGraph / Semantic Kernel); expose them via REST / gRPC APIs (FastAPI / Express / Java / Go).
• Implement tool adapters (SQL, search, document stores, web calls, code exec) with strict type contracts and safe sandboxes.
• Build model gateway integrations (OpenAI / Azure OpenAI / Bedrock / Vertex; self-hosted vLLM / TGI) with routing, rate-limits, retries, and fallback chains.

2. Retrieval, Data & Knowledge

• Stand up RAG services: chunking, enrichment, embeddings, indexing, hybrid / vector search (pgvector / Pinecone / Weaviate; OpenSearch / Azure AI Search).
• Implement ingestion pipelines (Airflow / Prefect / Celery / Ray) for docs, tickets, chat, and ERP / CRM data; handle PII redaction and metadata governance.
• Optimize retrieval quality (chunking strategies, re-rankers, query rewriting) with offline / online evaluation and A / B tests.

3. Quality, Testing & Evaluation

• Treat prompts and graphs as code: version, diff, and test them (unit tests for prompts / tools; golden sets; regression suites).
• Build evaluation harnesses (latency, cost, accuracy, toxicity, hallucination, guardrail hit-rates); wire into CI.
• Add drift detection for conversational systems; implement safe shutdown and auto-rollback.

4. Platform & Operations

• Package services as containers; deploy to Kubernetes with Helm / Argo CD; configure autoscaling, HPA / VPA, and resource quotas.
• Implement policy chains and guardrails (OPA / Gatekeeper for policy, Presidio for PII, Trivy for image scanning).
• Instrument deep observability: tracing (OpenTelemetry), metrics (Prometheus), logs (ELK / OPENSEARCH), cost meters per request / model.

5. Security & Compliance

• Manage secrets (HashiCorp Vault / KMS), signed images, SBOMs; enforce least-privilege IAM.
• Build tenant isolation and data residency controls; implement red / blue team prompts and jailbreak defenses.

6. Integration & Enterprise Workflows

• Ship connectors and events for SAP / CRM / ITSM and Kafka topics; design idempotent, retry-safe processors.
• Automate business workflows with pro-code services first; expose low-code surfaces only where appropriate.

7. Collaboration & Leadership

• Partner with Product, Data, and Platform teams to define SLAs / SLOs and success metrics.
• Mentor engineers on “AI as software” practices; run design reviews and postmortems.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in software engineering (prod services, not just prototypes), including 1+ year leading small projects.
• Strong in one systems language (Python / TypeScript / Go / Java) and comfortable in a second.
• Hands‑on with containers, Kubernetes, CI / CD (GitHub Actions / GitLab / Jenkins), IaC (Terraform), and cloud (Azure / AWS / GCP).
• Practical LLM experience: building RAG / agent apps, prompt design, tool‑use, and safety patterns.
• Data skills: designing schemas, batch / stream pipelines, and search indexes; proficiency with SQL and one vector DB.
• Testing mindset: unit / integration tests, load tests, golden datasets for LLM evals.
• Security basics: secrets, policies, scanning, and least‑privilege IAM.

Preferred Qualifications

• Agent orchestration (LangGraph, Semantic Kernel) and distributed compute (Ray) in production.
• Search / retrieval tuning (BM25 + vector hybrid, re‑ranking, query planning).
• Observability at scale with OpenTelemetry; cost / perf optimization across model / router layers.
• Experience in regulated or high‑throughput domains (e.g., telco, finance, healthcare); multi‑tenant and data‑residency patterns.
• Domain integrations (SAP / CRM / ITSM), event‑driven architectures (Kafka / Debezium), and policy enforcement (OPA / Gatekeeper).
• Familiarity with TM Forum APIs / BSS‑OSS patterns is a plus (if in telco context).

Tech Stack (Illustrative)

• Languages: Python, TypeScript / Node.js (plus Go / Java bonus)
• Frameworks: FastAPI / Express, LangGraph / Semantic Kernel, Ray / Celery, Airflow / Prefect
• Storage / Search: Postgres, Redis, S3 / Blob; pgvector / Pinecone / Weaviate; OpenSearch / Azure AI Search
• LLM Runtime: OpenAI / Azure OpenAI / Bedrock / Vertex; vLLM / TGI; inference routers / gateways
• Platform: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Argo CD, Terraform, Vault, Istio
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus / Grafana, ELK / OpenSearch
• Quality & Safety: pytest / Jest, prompt / unit test harnesses, guardrails, Presidio, Trivy

Additional Information

Why Join NCS

Lead high‑impact Data & AI advisory programs for major enterprises and public sector clients.

Shape enterprise strategies and governance frameworks that drive real transformation.

Work with a talented, multidisciplinary team in a collaborative environment.

Competitive compensation and strong professional development support.

We are driven by our AEIOU beliefs—Adventure, Excellence, Integrity, Ownership, and Unity—and we seek individuals who embody these values in both their professional and personal lives.

We are committed to our Impact: Valuing our clients, Growing our people, and Creating our future.

Together, we make the extraordinary happen.

Learn more about us at ncs.co and visit our LinkedIn career site.