Senior Principal Engineer, Platform & AI Transformation

About Grab and Our Workplace

Grab is Southeast Asia's leading superapp. From getting your favourite meals delivered to helping you manage your finances and getting around town hassle-free, we've got your back with everything. In Grab, purpose gives us joy and habits build excellence, while harnessing the power of Technology and AI to deliver the mission of driving Southeast Asia forward by economically empowering everyone, with heart, hunger, honour, and humility.

Build the System Behind the Grab SuperApp

We are a SuperApp operating at massive scale across transport, food, commerce, ads, merchant platforms, and enterprise services. Within this ecosystem, BECO (Business Ecosystem) powers the foundational platforms that connect merchants, consumers, ads, transactions, search, and intelligence.

We are now entering our next phase:

• Embedding G/AI into the engineering nervous system

• Raising reliability to utility-grade standards

• Unifying siloed platforms into a cohesive ecosystem

• Accelerating new businesses with AI-native architecture

To do this, we are hiring a Senior Principal Engineer — a rare, high-leverage individual contributor who will shape the technical trajectory of a 300+ engineer organisation. This role reports directly to the Head of BECO.

Why This Role Is Special

Most Principal roles influence a team. Some influence a domain. This role influences an entire engineering organisation. You will operate across five major departments spanning: 1). Merchant platforms, 2). Search & personalisation, 3). Ads & monetisation, 4). Transaction systems, 5). Enterprise capabilities

You are not here to own a microservice. You are here to evolve the system.

The Mission

1. Turn AI Into Engineering Leverage

We are moving beyond “AI demos.” You will help architect and scale:

• AI-assisted development workflows

• Agentic operational automation

• Reliability guardrails powered by AI

• Safe, test-backed automation systems

The goal is measurable improvement in:

• Engineering velocity

• Code quality

• Operational efficiency

You will shape how AI becomes embedded into how engineers work — not as a tool, but as infrastructure.

2. Build Reliability That Feels Invisible

We believe reliability should feel like running water — always there, never noticed. You will:

• Raise prevention standards across critical systems

• Institutionalise chaos engineering as discipline

• Strengthen detection and recovery mechanisms

• Reduce incident impact structurally, not reactively

This is about engineering maturity at scale.

3. Break Platform Silos

Search, Ads, Promo, Transactions, Data — today these evolve in parallel. We are building a unified ecosystem where:

• Ranking frameworks converge

• User understanding powers multiple surfaces

• Data infrastructure reduces cost and instability

• Shared capabilities unlock new business models

You will design the connective tissue that makes platformisation real.

4. Architect for Pattern-Breaking Growth

We are launching new businesses in e-commerce, AI agents, conversational transactions, and gamified engagement experiences. The challenge: Move fast without creating tomorrow’s technical debt. You will:

• Design clean 0→1 foundations

• Define execution models optimised for velocity

• Enable AI-native product experiences

• Balance exploration with ecosystem coherence

Who Thrives Here

You are a rare combination of:

• Deep distributed systems thinker

• Fluent in AI/ML system realities

• Opinionated about engineering culture

• Comfortable influencing senior stakeholders

• Energised by ambiguity

• High-agency and low-ego

 

You likely have:

• Operated at Staff+/Principal level in large-scale systems

• Driven cross-organisation architectural change

• Built or evolved platforms used by millions

• Touched reliability, search, ML, or transaction-heavy systems

You care about leverage.

You care about second-order effects.

You care about building systems that outlast you.

The Kind of Problems You’ll Solve

• How do we embed LLM agents safely into engineering workflows at scale?

• How do we raise reliability standards without slowing innovation?

• When do we centralise vs federate capabilities across domains?

• How do we unify ranking and recall systems across monetised and organic surfaces?

• How do we launch new AI-native businesses without fracturing the ecosystem?

These are not ticket-level problems.

They are system-shaping decisions.

What Success Looks Like (12–18 Months)

• AI-assisted engineering is a daily reality, not a pilot

• Reliability metrics trend structurally stronger

• Cross-platform capabilities converge

• At least one new business launches on a clean, scalable foundation

• Engineering quality becomes institutionalised, not tribal

Why Join Now

You will join at an inflection point:

• The ecosystem is large enough to matter

• The ambition is bold enough to be meaningful

• The mandate is clear enough to act

 

This is a role for someone who wants to shape how a SuperApp evolves technically over the next decade. If you want to:

• Influence 300+ engineers without managing them

• Architect systems that span AI, reliability, monetisation, and commerce

• Leave a structural mark on a major technology platform

We’d love to talk.

Life at Grab

We care about your well-being at Grab, here are some of the global benefits we offer:

• We have your back with Term Life Insurance and comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• With GrabFlex, create a benefits package that suits your needs and aspirations.
• Celebrate moments that matter in life with loved ones through Parental and Birthday leave, and give back to your communities through Love-all-Serve-all (LASA) volunteering leave
• We have a confidential Grabber Assistance Programme to guide and uplift you and your loved ones through life's challenges.
• Balancing personal commitments and life's demands are made easier with our FlexWork arrangements such as differentiated hours

What We Stand For At Grab

We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace that provides equal opportunity for Grabbers to grow and perform at their best. We consider all candidates fairly and equally regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, age, gender, family commitments, physical and mental impairments or disabilities, and other attributes that make them unique.