Lead Engineer - AI-Native Email Application

About KIRA

KIRA is on a mission to make financial services smarter, more dependable, and accessible to everyone. Since launching Southeast Asia's premier mobile-first insurance platform in 2019, we have expanded to offer a variety of financial tools including spending, saving, investing, exchanging, and travel services. We harness AI to empower users to manage their finances confidently and independently.

Our diverse and growing global team includes members from over 20 nationalities working across various locations, including remote settings. We seek passionate individuals dedicated to creating next-generation financial products for broad impact.

Position Overview

We are looking for a Lead Engineer who will take full technical leadership of complex products and systems, setting high engineering standards within the team. This role involves hands-on technical work as well as strategic system design, code development and review, problem-solving, mentoring, and driving significant initiatives from concept through to deployment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of major product features and engineering projects.
• Create scalable, reliable, and maintainable backend, frontend, API, database, and infrastructure systems.
• Remain actively involved with coding, prototyping, code reviews, troubleshooting, and production issue resolution.
• Make informed architecture and technical trade-off decisions balancing speed, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Translate ambiguous product and technical challenges into clear engineering plans and solutions.
• Establish and uphold high standards in code quality, system architecture, testing, security, observability, and production uptime.
• Review teammates’ designs and code, providing constructive and actionable feedback.
• Mentor and develop engineering team members to enhance overall technical capability.
• Proactively identify risks, bottlenecks, and architectural flaws early to prevent major issues.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, design, and AI teams to release high-quality products rapidly.
• Enhance engineering tools, workflows, and automation to boost team productivity.
• Own post-release system health, including monitoring, incident investigation, root cause analysis, and continuous reliability improvements.

Experience & Qualifications

• Deep software engineering experience with proven ability to build and ship production-grade systems.
• Expertise in at least one technical domain such as backend development, frontend development, distributed systems, API design, database technologies, or cloud infrastructure.
• Strong system design and architectural skills, with experience making technical decisions for complex or large-scale systems.
• Excellent hands-on coding skills and a commitment to remaining actively involved in implementation.
• Demonstrated leadership of major engineering projects or providing technical guidance to other engineers.
• Proficient in code review, debugging intricate problems, and working directly with live production environments.
• Ability to articulate complex technical choices clearly and influence engineering teams across the organization.
• Strong product sensitivity, linking technical efforts directly to customer and business results.
• Comfortable working swiftly amid uncertainty and managing projects end-to-end from definition to deployment.
• Sound judgment on when to prioritize speed, simplicity, or deeper engineering effort.

Who This Role Is Not For

• Engineers seeking leadership without coding or code review responsibilities.
• Those preferring to specialize narrowly without broad technical involvement.
• Candidates who require complete specifications before beginning any work.
• Engineers prone to over-engineering where simpler solutions suffice.
• Individuals focusing solely on implementation without understanding broader product or business objectives.
• Those avoiding production incident handling, debugging, or system ownership post-release.
• Candidates unable to plainly explain their personal technical leadership and contributions.

Additional Information

Location and Work Environment: This is a fully remote position with a globally distributed team spanning multiple time zones. Effective remote collaboration and excellent English communication skills are essential.

Hiring Process: The interview sequence consists of an online assessment or practical exercise, followed by a technical interview, and finally a discussion with the CEO. The process aims to be efficient, with offers extended within one week for strong candidates who progress swiftly.