Lead Software Engineer, Scribe

Grab; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Grab is seeking a Technical Lead for the Scribe backend to steer architecture, roadmap, and cost efficiency from its Singapore office. You will mentor senior engineers and collaborate with teams across data, AI, and platform engineering to deliver scalable clickstream solutions.

You will own end-to-end backend components, champion reliability, and drive initiatives across ingestion, streaming, and data-lake pipelines, reporting to the Engineering Manager in Singapore.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, CS, or related field.
• Minimum 7 years of software engineering experience including technical lead or architect roles.
• Proficiency in Go; hands-on Python or Scala experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and roadmap of Scribe backend: ingestion gateway, event lifecycle, streaming, and data-lake pipelines.
• Lead Project MEGA to completion with typed specs, validation, CI guardrails, and migration of legacy events.
• Design and deliver the governed clickstream data layer and event vocabulary for funnel analytics.
• Run the platform cost programme: lineage, deprecation, retention, right-sizing, chargeback.
• Write RFCs and drive cross-team technical decisions for closure and reliability improvements.
• Own on-call process, incident response, post-mortems, fire drills, SLAs and data-loss monitoring.
• Lead an engineering team and mentor future technical leads.

Skills

Go

Python

Scala

Backend systems

Streaming systems

Data contracts

Cloud cost ownership

Education

Software Engineering / Computer Science degree

Tools

CI/CD tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Apache Flink

Apache Spark

Iceberg/Delta Lake

Job description

Company Description

About Grab and Our Workplace

Grab is Southeast Asia's leading superapp. From getting your favourite meals delivered to helping you manage your finances and getting around town hassle-free, we've got your back with everything. In Grab, purpose gives us joy and habits build excellence, while harnessing the power of Technology and AI to deliver the mission of driving Southeast Asia forward by economically empowering everyone, with heart, hunger, honour, and humility.

Job Description

Get to Know the Team

Clickstream Intelligence Platform (Scribe) is Grab's in-house app instrumentation and insights platform. It captures and processes user clickstream activity across all Grab apps at petabyte scale, and powers observability, experimentation, real-time personalisation and business analytics. Through Project MEGA, Scribe has moved from a passive event transport layer to a platform that enforces typed, validated event schemas at the point of instrumentation, and is now building a governed clickstream data layer, self-serve funnel analytics and agent-assisted instrumentation tooling on top of it. The team is based in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City and works closely with Mobile Platform, Product Analytics, Data Warehouse and Developer AI teams.

Get to Know the Role

We are looking for a Technical Lead for the Scribe backend team with breadth across the following technical stacks:

• Web Portal: React.js and Golang backend.
• Ingestion and Streaming: high-throughput Go gateway services, Kafka, Apache Flink.
• Data Processing / Storage: Apache Spark, Trino, StarRocks, Hive, Iceberg / Delta Lake on AWS.
• Applied AI: LLM agents for code migration and spec generation, MCP servers, Python backend.

You will set the technical direction for the platform, own its architecture, cost and reliability, and mentor a team of senior engineers and interns. You will report to the Engineering Manager in Singapore and work onsite at Grab's Singapore office (One-North).

The Critical Tasks You Will Perform

• Own the architecture and roadmap of Scribe's backend: ingestion gateway, event-lifecycle services (specs, ownership, versioning, deprecation), streaming and data-lake pipelines, and the APIs behind the Scribe Portal and Scribe MCP.
• Lead Project MEGA to completion as business-as-usual: typed specs, producer-side validation, CI guardrails, and agent-driven migration of legacy events across Grab's Tech Families.
• Design and deliver the governed clickstream data layer and event vocabulary that power funnel analytics and user-understanding use cases.
• Run the platform cost programme: event lineage, automated deprecation, retention policy, gateway right-sizing and legacy stream retirement, with clear chargeback to producing teams.
• Write RFCs, drive cross-team technical decisions to closure, and represent Scribe in architecture and operational-excellence reviews.
• Own operational excellence for a critical platform: on-call process, incident response, post-mortems, fire drills, SLA and data-loss monitoring.
• Lead an engineering team with diverse technical stacks and grow the next technical leads.

Qualifications

What Essential Skills You Will Need

• Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related undergraduate degree.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in Software Engineering, including experience as a technical lead or architect for a platform used by many teams.
• Proficient in Go, or willing to learn it, with hands-on experience in Python or Scala.
• Experience developing large-scale backend and streaming systems, with a good understanding of the trade-offs needed for high-load, low-latency systems while maintaining reliability and cost efficiency.
• Experience defining and enforcing data contracts or schemas across many producer teams, including versioning, migration and deprecation.
• Experience owning cloud cost for a large data platform on AWS: attribution, retention, right-sizing and measured savings.

(Optional) A big plus if you have:

• Experience with Apache Flink (real-time processing) and Apache Spark (batch processing), and table formats such as Iceberg or Delta Lake.
• Experience applying LLM agents to engineering workflows (code migration, MCP servers, evals and guardrails).
• Experience with mobile analytics instrumentation or clickstream analytics platforms.
• Proficiency in CI/CD tools, Terraform and Kubernetes.

Additional Information

Life at Grab

We care about your well-being at Grab, here are some of the global benefits we offer:

• We have your back with Term Life Insurance and comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• With GrabFlex, create a benefits package that suits your needs and aspirations.
• Celebrate moments that matter in life with loved ones through Parental and Birthday leave, and give back to your communities through Love-all-Serve-all (LASA) volunteering leave
• We have a confidential Grabber Assistance Programme to guide and uplift you and your loved ones through life's challenges.
• Balance personal commitments and life's demands are made easier with our FlexWork arrangements such as differentiated hours

What We Stand For at Grab

We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace that enables diverse Grabbers to grow and perform at their best. As an equal opportunity employer, we consider all candidates fairly and equally regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, family commitments, physical and mental impairments or disabilities, and other attributes that make them unique.