Staff AI Engineer

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own.

We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,300 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles to see it in full.

As a Staff AI Engineer, you’ll define the technical direction for next-generation AI solutions that improve internal efficiency and transform how customers interact with Airwallex. You’ll design and implement robust APIs and system architectures for AI applications, including agentic experiences, language-model-powered workflows, search and data analysis systems. You’ll shape AI application roadmaps, research and apply emerging technologies, and partner with diverse cross-functional teams to turn product goals into reliable systems. You’ll also help resolve application issues and software bugs with prompt, effective solutions while maintaining a high bar for customer experience.

You’ll work from our Singapore office five days a week.

Essentials

• 10+ years of experience in backend software development, with a passion for AI and language technologies.

• A proven track record of delivering major impact.

• Proficiency in Python, TypeScript or JavaScript.

• Experience designing and developing large-scale distributed systems with high concurrency, high load and high availability.

• Experience working with vector databases.

• A relevant degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related field.

Preferred

• Familiarity with MLOps practices and deployment pipelines for AI-driven products.

• You're excited by a category that hasn't been won yet, and want to be early enough to shape it.

• You're comfortable with ambiguity. Give you a problem, not a prescription, and you'll run with it.

• You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

• You say what you mean. You're direct, but you lead with respect.

• You simplify complexity rather than hiding behind it.

AI at Airwallex is building the path from financial software to autonomous finance. At the center of this vision is Kai, Airwallex’s AI assistant and the intelligent interface to our global financial platform. Kai connects AI with capabilities across payments, accounts, transfers, cards, expenses, and other financial workflows—enabling customers to describe what they want to achieve while the system handles more of the complexity underneath.

You’ll build intelligent financial products and autonomous agents that understand business context, plan and reason across multi-step workflows, execute actions within clearly defined controls, and learn from outcomes. The work spans agent architecture, orchestration, context and knowledge systems, ontology, evaluation, governance, monitoring, and reliability.

The challenge is uniquely demanding: AI systems are probabilistic, while moving money requires precision, permissions, auditability, deterministic controls, and regulatory compliance. You’ll help define where AI should reason and where financial infrastructure must remain deterministic—turning frontier models into safe, controllable systems that businesses can trust.

Join exceptional engineers advancing Kai from assistance to action and, ultimately, toward autonomous finance—where customers define the outcome they want and intelligent systems securely execute more of the work required to achieve it.

Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters

To protect you from recruitment scams, please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details, sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport), or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page.

Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.

Equal opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.