Technical Lead, Materials AI & Engineering

Mainsoft LTDA; Singapore; On-site; SGD 210,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

PatSnap’s Materials team seeks a hands-on engineering leader to own our technical roadmap, strengthen data and search foundations, and build the engineering team behind them.

You'll drive technical strategy across data ingestion, indexing, AI integration and system reliability while hiring, mentoring and setting standards for delivery. Collaboration with product managers and materials experts will translate complex problems into tangible plans.

Qualifications

• Proven engineering management experience leading data-intensive platforms.
• Experience building production data pipelines, indexing and search systems.
• Strong architectural judgment across backend services and distributed systems.
• Ability to translate vague requirements into actionable engineering plans.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy and roadmap across data, search and AI, prioritising investments.
• Lead data and search engineering across ingestion, parsing, normalisation, modelling, indexing and retrieval.
• Build and mentor a multidisciplinary team of data, AI and software engineers; own hiring and career development.
• Set standards for design, testing, deployment and observability to improve reliability and cost.
• Collaborate with product managers and materials experts to translate problems into plans and measurable outcomes.
• Provide engineering coaching and performance management across cycles of growth.

Skills

Technical leadership

Roadmap ownership

Data engineering

Search systems

Backend architecture

Team building

Java

Go

Python

Kubernetes

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

Job description

About The Role

Materials R&D runs on information that is buried in papers, patents, datasheets and specialist terminology. PatSnap’s Materials team is building the data and AI products that make that knowledge searchable, structured and decision-ready for R&D teams.

About The Role

Materials R&D runs on information that is buried in papers, patents, datasheets and specialist terminology. PatSnap’s Materials team is building the data and AI products that make that knowledge searchable, structured and decision-ready for R&D teams.

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.
• 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.