Founding Lead AI Engineer (Permanent)

Founding Lead AI Engineer (Permanent)

Location: Thailand

Employment Type: Permanent, Full-time

Location Type: Hybrid (Thailand office + regional collaboration)

Department: AI Engineering

Shape AI That Powers the Future of Financial Access in Southeast Asia

A leading fintech platform is seeking a Founding Lead AI Engineer to design, scale, and lead next-generation AI systems across the region. This is a permanent, high-impact opportunity where you'll combine hands-on engineering with team leadership to build intelligent solutions for millions of users.

In this role, you'll report directly to the Head of AI, mentor engineers, set technical direction, and help grow a world-class AI team all while contributing code and shipping models into production.

Why This Role Matters

• Own the design and deployment of core AI systems that serve millions.
• Act as the right hand to the Head of AI, driving execution and setting engineering standards.
• Mentor, coach, and lead junior engineers to raise overall team capability.
• Play a key role in building and scaling a high-performance AI engineering function.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and ship production-grade ML models for fraud detection, risk scoring, personalization, and more.
• Lead model architecture, data pipeline design, and deployment strategies.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and data teams to deliver impactful AI solutions.
• Own the end-to-end ML lifecycle: data preparation, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Review code, guide technical decisions, and mentor engineers through challenges.
• Champion AI best practices, experimentation, and continuous improvement.
• Drive technical hiring by interviewing and evaluating candidates.
• Stay ahead of ML advancements and introduce cutting-edge solutions into production.

You'll Thrive Here If You

• Lead from the front, hands-on in code while elevating others.
• Think like an owner, proactive, decisive, and accountable.
• Operate at speed,  balancing trade-offs and shipping impactful solutions quickly.
• Thrive in ambiguity bringing clarity, direction, and focus to complex problems.
• Care about solving real-world problems, not just academic ones.
• Enjoy growing both people and technology, mentoring others while building scalable systems.
• Have a builders mindset fast prototyping, iterating, and improving constantly.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 4-6 years of AI/ML engineering experience with production deployment.
• Strong proficiency in Python (must-have).
• Proficiency with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn).
• Solid understanding of full ML lifecycle data pipelines, model training, validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Proven track record of technical leadership and mentoring engineers.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Thai Citizenship and willingness to work in a hybrid setup from Thailand, collaborating regionally.

Nice to Have

• Experience with MLOps tools (MLflow, Airflow, Docker, GCP/AWS).
• Familiarity with responsible AI practices (fairness, interpretability, governance).
• Experience in startup or scale-up environments.
• Background in building reusable ML components, tools, or platforms.

What You'll Get

• Permanent role with a competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.
• Hybrid flexibility strikes a balance between remote work and in-person collaboration.
• High ownership and visibility, with impact at a regional scale.
• Direct exposure to senior leadership as the right hand to the Head of AI.
• Opportunity to grow and lead a best-in-class AI engineering team.
• Accelerated career growth in a fast-paced, innovative environment.
• An open, collaborative culture where ideas are valued and execution is recognized.