Engineering lead

PATSNAP PTE. LTD.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

PATSNAP PTE. LTD. is seeking a hands-on engineering leader to own the technical roadmap, strengthen data and search foundations, and build the engineering team behind them.

You will own technical strategy, drive data and search initiatives, and shape the architecture guiding AI-enabled products. Lead a multidisciplinary team spanning data, AI and software engineering. Establish production standards, drive reliability and cost improvements, and partner with product managers to translate customer

Qualifications

• Proven engineering management experience leading teams through multiple cycles of growth and development.
• Track record defining and executing technical roadmaps for data-intensive platforms across data, search and AI.
• Extensive experience building or leading production data pipelines, search or retrieval systems with emphasis on data quality and relevance.
• Strong architectural judgment across backend services, databases, distributed systems and APIs.
• Hands-on credibility in production engineering with languages like Java, Go, Scala, Python, Rust or C++.
• Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into concrete engineering plans and drive cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap across data, search and AI.
• Lead data and search engineering teams, define ownership and milestones.
• Build and manage a multidisciplinary engineering organization with hiring and career development.
• Set standards for design, testing, deployment and observability to improve reliability, performance and cost of AI applications.
• Collaborate with product managers and experts to translate problems into technical plans and measurable outcomes.

Skills

Engineering management

Technical roadmap ownership

Data & search expertise

Backend systems design

Production systems reliability

Hands-on coding ability

Job description

We're looking for a hands-on engineering leader to own our technical roadmap, strengthen our data and search foundations, and build the engineering team behind them.

What you'll own

• Technical strategy and roadmap: Assess existing systems, identify architectural gaps and define a coherent technical roadmap across data, search and AI. Prioritise investments and make decisions about what to improve, simplify, replace or rebuild.
• Data and search engineering: Structure and drive work across ingestion, parsing, normalisation, knowledge modelling, indexing and retrieval. Establish clear ownership, milestones and measurable standards for data quality, coverage, freshness and search relevance.
• Engineering organisation: Build, grow and manage a multidisciplinary team spanning data, AI and software engineering. Own hiring, performance management and career development. Establish effective ways of working and develop technical leaders.
• Production excellence: Set engineering standards for system design, testing, deployment and observability. Drive improvements in reliability, performance and cost, including the evaluation and productionisation of AI applications.
• Product collaboration: Partner with product managers and materials experts to translate customer and functional problems into technical plans, engineering priorities and measurable outcomes.

What you bring

• Proven engineering management: Experience directly managing engineers through multiple cycles of team building, hiring, growth and organisational development, including coaching and performance management.
• Technical roadmap ownership: A track record independently defining and executing technical roadmaps for complex, data-intensive products or platforms, from diagnosing problems and evaluating approaches through to delivery.
• Data and search expertise: Substantial experience building or leading production data platforms, pipelines, search or retrieval systems, with a strong understanding of data quality, indexing and relevance.
• Strong engineering fundamentals: Sound architectural judgement across backend services, databases, distributed systems and APIs, with practical experience operating reliable production systems.
• Hands-on technical credibility: Strong production engineering experience in backend, data or search systems, with proficiency in relevant languages such as Java, Go, Scala, Python, Rust or C++. Comfortable reviewing architecture and code, challenging technical decisions and resolving complex engineering problems.
• Product-oriented leadership: Able to turn ambiguous requirements into actionable engineering plans, make pragmatic trade-offs and communicate clearly across disciplines.

Nice to have

• Search relevance, hybrid retrieval, RAG and LLM-powered applications.
• Document intelligence, OCR and structured information extraction.
• Ontologies, entity resolution and knowledge graphs.
• Scientific or technical data experience, particularly materials science, chemistry or patents.