Senior AI Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

Zalora is looking for a Senior AI Engineer to design, build, and ship AI-powered systems that make our data and technology teams - and the wider business - faster and smarter. You'll work across the full lifecycle: from prototyping applied ML and LLM-based solutions, to productionizing models and pipelines that run reliably at e-commerce scale. This role sits within the Data Engineering & Analytics organization and partners closely with data engineers, analysts, and business stakeholders across Operations, Marketing, Commercial, and Finance.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production-grade AI/ML systems - including LLM-powered applications, predictive models, and intelligent automation - that integrate with Zalora's data platform (BigQuery, dbt, Airflow).
• Own the full engineering lifecycle: prototyping, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration of models and AI agents/pipelines.
• Partner with data engineers and analysts to identify high-impact use cases across e-commerce operations, marketing, customer experience, and finance.
• Build reusable tooling and infrastructure (retrieval pipelines, evaluation frameworks, prompt/version management, MLOps tooling) to accelerate the team's AI capabilities.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into well-scoped technical solutions, and communicate results and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior leadership.
• Establish and champion engineering best practices for AI systems - testing, evaluation, observability, cost management, and responsible/safe deployment.
• Mentor other engineers on applied AI techniques and help raise the technical bar across the team..

• 5+ years of software or data engineering experience, with at least 2+ years building and shipping AI/ML systems in production.
• Strong programming skills in Python (and comfort with SQL); experience building reliable, well-tested services and pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with at least one of: LLM application development (RAG, agents, prompt engineering, fine-tuning), classical ML/predictive modeling, or ML platform/MLOps engineering.
• Practical experience with cloud data platforms (GCP/BigQuery preferred, AWS/Azure also welcome) and modern data tooling (dbt, Airflow, or similar orchestration).
• Solid understanding of ML/AI system design trade-offs: latency, cost, evaluation, data quality, and failure modes.
• Strong communication skills - able to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and write clear documentation.
• A pragmatic, product-minded approach: comfortable moving from ambiguous problem to shipped solution without waiting for perfect requirements.g.

Nice to Have

• Experience with the Anthropic or OpenAI APIs, vector databases, or agentic frameworks.
• Background in e-commerce, marketplace, or retail data domains.
• Experience working in a bilingual (English/Vietnamese) or regional Southeast Asian environment.
• Familiarity with data governance, experimentation frameworks, or responsible AI practices.

• The unique opportunity to have a serious impact on a growing organization
• A dynamic working environment shaping the face of fashion e-commerce in growth markets
• Work closely with a global talent pool with international mindset
• Best practice scaled agile engineering
• Amazing office and great culture! Massage chairs, table tennis, video game room, quarterly team events, yearly company trip, end of the year party
• Hybrid working environment.
• Clear career progression plan and support
• Macbook or laptop when you start
• Social insurance, medical insurance & health insurance
• 13th month salary
• 15 days of annual leave, 30 days of sick leave/mental health, 1 day of occasion leave