Apex AI matches fast-growing companies with top-tier marketing and engineering professionals from the APAC region.

It is a subsidiary of Roar Global, a global media company that operates across media resales, content production, and building expert marketing teams. Roar Global has offices in Sri Lanka, Australia, Bangladesh, Laos, Brunei, and Singapore and is proud to be ranked as one of the 50 Best Workplaces as well as one of the 15 Best Workplaces for Millennials in Sri Lanka by Great Place to Work®.

We're hiring a Head of AI Engineering for a hands-on technical leadership role with a clear pathway to CTO as the company scales. This isn't a traditional engineering lead role - we need someone who lives inside the AI tooling ecosystem, builds with it daily, and can turn that fluency into a genuine competitive edge for our product. You'll own technical direction, lead architecture decisions, build hands-on, and shape how AI powers both our platform and the way our team works.

What Makes This Role Different

We're looking for someone who treats AI tools as core infrastructure, not a side interest. That means daily, high-frequency use of tools like Claude Code, Claude's API/Agent SDK, and similar agentic coding tools to actually ship product - not just experimenting with them. You should be plugged into the latest developments in the space (new model releases, MCP and the broader tool-use ecosystem, agentic workflows, evals, context engineering) and quick to figure out how they change what's possible for us. Ideal for someone who has already been living this way and wants a leadership seat to push it further.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction and architecture of the platform across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted and agentic development practices across the engineering team - not just using AI tools personally, but raising the bar for how the whole team builds
• Design and implement AI orchestration systems, multi-agent workflows, and RAG pipelines
• Build scalable and reliable integrations with LLM providers and AI services (Claude, and others as needed)
• Contribute hands-on to software development across web, mobile, backend services, and AI workflows, using AI coding tools as a first-class part of your own workflow
• Develop and maintain cloud-native infrastructure and deployment pipelines
• Maintain secure, scalable, multi-tenant application architecture
• Improve system reliability, observability, testing, and engineering standards
• Stay current on the fast-moving AI landscape (new models, agent frameworks, tool-use protocols like MCP, evals) and bring relevant advances into our roadmap quickly

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with strong full-stack development capabilities
• Genuine, daily hands-on use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) as part of how you build software today
• Able to point to specific, concrete examples of shipping production work primarily through AI-assisted or agentic workflows - not occasional autocomplete use, but real features or projects built substantially faster because of how you use these tools
• Hands-on experience building and deploying AI-powered products in production environments
• Strong understanding of LLM orchestration, RAG systems, vector retrieval, agentic workflows, and prompt engineering
• Demonstrated track record of staying current with the AI space and applying new capabilities quickly (following model releases, new tooling, protocols like MCP, emerging agent patterns)
• Strong experience with modern TypeScript ecosystems and backend architecture
• Experience working with cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure
• Experience building scalable APIs, distributed systems, and modern infrastructure
• Strong systems thinking and ability to make architectural decisions in fast-moving environments

Nice to Have

• Experience with Anthropic's Claude ecosystem specifically (Claude API, Agent SDK, Claude Code, MCP servers)
• Experience with real-time systems, WebRTC, voice AI, or transcription platforms
• Experience with mobile development frameworks such as React Native
• Experience leading engineering teams or working in founding engineer environments
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and event-driven architectures

What We Offer

• Opportunity to join a high-impact AI-native company at an early growth stage, where AI tooling isn't a bolt-on but core to how we build
• Clear pathway to CTO with meaningful ownership and influence
• Exposure to modern AI systems, orchestration workflows, and cloud-native architecture
• A spacious office in the heart of Colombo, with an endless supply of tea, coffee and snacks
• Complimentary lunch on all working days
• Team activities, team trips and yearly outbound training trips
• An attractive remuneration package

Application Process

At Apex AI, we're selective about our team, aiming for the top 1% of talent in the industry. Our recruitment process is thorough, focusing on excellence and innovation. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for further consideration. We appreciate the time and effort all applicants put in.

We Are an Equal Opportunity Employer

Roar Global is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds, and our hiring decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and business needs. We value diversity and believe it contributes to a more enriching work environment.

If you find this opportunity appealing, please submit your résumé, a portfolio showcasing your relevant work, and information on two professional references. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences.