Tech Lead/Senior Backend Engineer

About Klook We are a leading pan-regional experiences platform in Asia Pacific, purpose built to digitalize experiences and make them accessible to every traveler.

Our mission is to build the digital infrastructure for the global experience economy — empowering merchants to share their passions and travelers to discover the heartbeat of each destination.

We operate a mobile-first, curated platform featuring diverse experiences across global destinations.

Do you share our belief in the wonders of travel? Global citizens ourselves, Klookers are not only curating memorable experiences for others but co-creating our world of joy within Klook.

We work hard and play hard, upkeeping our high-performing culture as we are guided daily by our 6 core values:

Customer First

Push Boundaries

Critical Thinking

Build for Scale

Less is More

Win as One

We never settle, and together, we believe in achieving greater heights and realizing endless possibilities ahead of us in the dynamic new era of travel. Care to be a part of this revolution? Join us!

Role Overview

Role Title: Senior Backend Engineer / Tech Lead

Function: Engineering

Seniority Level: Mid-Senior level

Employment Type: Full time

Job Responsibilities

• Own architecture design, technology selection, and continuous evolution of core systems — high-throughput ticketing engine, virtual queue / waiting room, inventory management, onsite verification with offline fault-tolerance, and merchant analytics dashboards
• Ensure system reliability under flash-sale traffic: capacity planning, rate limiting, graceful degradation, failover, and observability
• Lead the authoring and review of technical design documents — including system architecture, user stories with acceptance criteria, database modelling, complete API specifications with error code taxonomy, authentication flows, and caching/performance strategies — ensuring designs are thorough and actionable
• Lead technical design reviews and architecture decisions; establish and enforce engineering standards, development processes, and quality benchmarks
• Partner with Business, Product, Operations, Frontend, and QA to decompose complex requirements into actionable technical plans and drive end-to-end delivery
• Take ownership of critical technical challenges; proactively identify bottlenecks and drive optimisation
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers; build the team's technical capability and knowledge base
• Champion AI-assisted tooling adoption across team workflows
• Contribute to multi-region architecture and cross-border call-path optimisation

Key Profile

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science or related field; 7+ years of backend experience at mid-to-large internet platforms
• Expert in the Java / Spring Boot ecosystem; able to design complex distributed systems from the ground up
• Proven track record architecting high-throughput, high-concurrency systems (flash sales, virtual queues, inventory, etc.)
• Deep understanding of MySQL tuning, Redis distributed caching & locking, and Kafka in high-traffic contexts
• Hands-on microservices governance experience: rate limiting, graceful degradation, capacity planning, fault recovery, distributed tracing
• Able to lead the creation of thorough technical design documents (system architecture, API specifications, data models, authentication and security strategies) and effectively drive review and execution
• Demonstrated experience embedding AI tools into team engineering workflows to systematically raise team productivity
• Has defined AI-assisted coding standards or driven team-wide adoption of AI tooling (e.g., Copilot usage guidelines, prompt engineering practices, AI-augmented code review processes)
• Strong technical judgement with the ability to make soun