Senior AI Engineer

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.

What You Will Do

• 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.

• 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 opportunity to shape how AI is applied across a leading Southeast Asian e-commerce platform.
• A collaborative, cross-functional team environment with direct exposure to senior stakeholders.
• Competitive compensation, flexible hybrid working arrangements, and a culture that values pragmatic, high-impact engineering.

ZALORA exists for the millions of fashion consumers in Asia seeking a shopping experience focused on their unique styles, trends and fit. As Asia’s leading online fashion destination, ZALORA was founded in 2012 and has a presence in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia & Brunei, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan. ZALORA’s localised sites offer an extensive collection of top international and local brands as well as our own in-house labels across apparel, shoes and accessories for men and women. ZALORA is part of Global Fashion Group, the world's leader in online fashion for emerging markets.

ZALORA is not obligated to accept resumes from any third parties on behalf of potential candidates for any position (advertised or otherwise) by any means, unless ZALORA has executed a written agreement with such third party and has expressly requested such third party for candidate referrals. Third parties who provide unsolicited resumes of candidate(s) shall waive and forfeit all rights to claim for any placement fees or referral fees in the event that such candidate is eventually engaged or employed by ZALORA or Global Fashion Group.