Coderra is seeking a hands-on Tech Lead to drive the design, build, and evolution of our production-grade agentic AI platform. This is a senior technical leadership role with a strong execution bias: approximately 80% hands-on coding and 20% delivery, people, and stakeholder management.
Tech Lead – AI & Platform Engineering | Hybrid
Location - Colombo Sri Lanka (Hybrid)
Regular travel required across ANZ, EU, and UAE
Role Overview
Coderra is seeking a hands-on Tech Lead to drive the design, build, and evolution of our production-grade agentic AI platform. This is a senior technical leadership role with a strong execution bias: approximately 80% hands-on coding and 20% delivery, people, and stakeholder management.
You will lead a small, high-calibre engineering team (currently ~5, scaling to ~10 within 12 months), while remaining deeply involved in core system architecture, critical code paths, and engineering standards. This role suits someone with strong technical depth, low ego, and a practical, delivery-focused mindset.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Leadership (Primary – ~80%)
Design, build, and maintain production-grade AI systems, with a strong focus on:
- LLM-powered agent architectures
- Multi-agent orchestration and workflows
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Vector databases, embeddings, memory, and tool use
- Own and contribute directly to core codebases (Python-first, backend-heavy).
- Architect scalable, secure, and reliable systems suitable for enterprise and regulated environments.
- Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality, testing, observability, performance, and security.
- Make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance speed, robustness, and long-term maintainability.
- Work closely with the CTO on platform direction, technical strategy, and complex design decisions.
- Team Leadership & Delivery (Secondary – ~20%)
- Lead, mentor, and technically guide a team of engineers (5 now, scaling to ~10).
- Run lightweight delivery processes: planning, prioritisation, reviews, and execution tracking.
- Unblock engineers by providing clear technical direction and fast decision-making.
- Conduct code reviews with a strong focus on correctness, clarity, and production readiness.
- Support hiring, onboarding, and technical growth of new team members.
- Collaborate with product, business, and client-facing stakeholders when required.
Required Experience & Skills
Core Requirements
- 6–8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time in ML/AI-heavy systems.
Strong hands-on experience with:
- Python (production-grade backend development)
- LLMs, embeddings, RAG pipelines, vector databases
- Agent frameworks (e.g. LangGraph, LangChain, or equivalent)
- Proven experience designing and building scalable distributed systems or microservice architectures.
- Demonstrated ability to lead by doing — this is not an architecture-only or people-only role.
- Experience mentoring engineers and setting technical direction for small teams.
- Strong systems thinking and ability to reason about trade-offs under real-world constraints.
Nice to Have
- Experience with MLOps, model lifecycle management, or AI infrastructure at scale.
- Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerised deployments.
- Prior experience in startups or fast-moving product teams.
- Experience building platforms used by external customers (B2B SaaS or enterprise systems).
Ways of Working & Values
- Low ego, high ownership.
- Direct, honest communicator who values clarity over politics.
- Pragmatic problem-solver: biased toward shipping real systems, not prototypes or hype.
- Comfortable operating across cultures and time zones.
- Willing and able to travel across ANZ, EU, and UAE as needed for delivery, deployment, or strategic work.
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive salary (commensurate with seniority and impact).
- Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP) participation.
- Long-term growth pathway within a core leadership role at Coderra.
- Opportunity to work on genuinely hard, novel agentic AI problems with real-world impact.
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