AI Engineer - Octave: Data and Advanced Analytics Centre of Excellence

John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) is Sri Lanka’s largest listed conglomerate in the Colombo Stock Exchange. From managing hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka and the Maldives to providing port, marine fuel and logistics services to IT solutions, manufacturing of food and beverages to running a chain of supermarkets, tea broking to stock broking, life insurance and banking to real estate, we have made our presence felt in  virtually every major sphere of the economy.

Our business built over 150 years touches nearly every major sector of the economy. We generate a significant quantum of data, and we intend to use it to build the future of our businesses. Our Digital and Analytics insights can positively disrupt life for all Sri Lankans and our commitment to passion and excellence will help to deliver superior value to customers, our people, and the community.

Octave is at the core of data-driven strategic and operational decision-making at JKH. We solve some of the most complex challenges across multiple industry verticals by developing advanced machine learning and AI solutions—positively impacting the lives of millions of Sri Lankans. In addition to our work within JKH, we also collaborate with local and international clients to support their AI and data analytics transformations. At Octave, you’ll be part of a world-class team of data scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI researchers, guided by senior technical leaders with PhDs in AI-related fields and experience at leading global tech companies.

We are seeking a highly skilled Full-Stack AI Engineer to play a pivotal part in OCTAVE’s AI journey. The ideal candidate can design user interfaces and backend services, integrate off-the-shelf models and managed AI services (LLM APIs, vision APIs, vector databases, etc.), and operate these systems reliably in production.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality AI (including Agentic AI) Applications.  
• Build and maintain AI services that integrate AI model APIs (Google Vertex, Azure OpenAI, Hugging Face, etc.), manage session/state, rate limits, caching, and privacy controls.
• Implement ingestion and retrieval pipelines: document ingestion, embedding generation, vector DB selection (Chroma, Pinecone, Milvus), and RAG orchestration.
• Create robust prompt/context engineering patterns, templates, and safety filters to control hallucination, cost and user intent.
• Implement scalable and efficient backend systems using state-of-the-art technologies (e.g., FastAPI, Node.js)
• Design and implement intuitive and optimized user interfaces and frontend functionalities as needed.
• Ensure infra, deployment and reliability: containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), serverless options, CI/CD, monitoring, logging and incident response.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop AI applications, implement new features and functionalities. Discuss, contribute ideas, give meaningful code reviews and communicate accurately and effectively. 
   

Desired Skills / Competencies 

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• Proven track record of designing, developing, and maintaining complex, responsive AI applications as a Full Stack AI Engineer.
• Thorough understanding in GenAI and Agentic AI Frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, LlamaIndex, etc.)
• Strong proficiency in backend technologies (e.g., FastAPI, Node.js).
• Experience with database systems, both relational (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (e.g., MongoDB). 
  
• Experience in frontend technologies (e.g., React, NextJS)
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Proven ability to analyze and solve complex technical problems independently.
• Leadership qualities and a proactive approach to fostering a positive and collaborative team environment. 

John Keells Group is an equal-opportunity employer, and we invite applications from all suitably qualified individuals to join our team. By applying, you consent to the processing of your personal information for recruitment purposes and acknowledge that reference checks may be conducted. 

By applying, you consent to the processing of your personal information for recruitment purposes and acknowledge that reference checks may be conducted.