Principal Applied AI Engineer

Principal Applied AI Engineer 

Location: Saudi Arabia Type: Full-time Seniority: Principal / Staff

About Qawafel

Qawafel is building digital financial infrastructure for businesses in Saudi Arabia. Our mission is to make B2B financing, credit, and financial operations more accessible, efficient, and reliable for companies.

We are looking for a Principal Applied AI Engineer with hands-on experience building production AI systems in fintech or another regulated environment. This is a senior IC role to start, with the runway to lead the AI team as the function grows. You will personally build and own the AI layer across Qawafel's platform, from the internal tools that speed up financing decisions to the AI features our customers use directly.

Role Overview

As Principal Applied AI Engineer, you will own AI architecture and delivery at Qawafel. You will write the code, make the architectural calls, and ship the systems yourself. You will work with leadership, engineering, product, design, credit operations, risk, and compliance.

Qawafel sits at the center of B2B trade in Saudi Arabia. We take the messy reality of how businesses buy, sell, and pay each other and turn it into structured data that can be financed. 

This role starts hands-on. As the AI function grows, the expectation is that you transition into leading the team while staying technically deep.

Responsibilities

• Own AI architecture and delivery across Qawafel's platform.

• Personally design, build, and deploy production AI systems with the observability and evaluation that production work requires.

• Build AI features using LLMs, RAG, document intelligence pipelines, embeddings, vector databases, and AI agents.

• Build document intelligence pipelines that handle financial statements, bank statements, invoices, contracts, and trade records across English and Arabic.

• Lead the build of an internal AI assistant that speeds up the financing workflow end to end.

• Choose and integrate the AI models, document processing tools, vector databases, and supporting infrastructure we use.

• Define how we evaluate, monitor, and secure AI systems in production.

• Work with product and engineering to embed AI into core platform workflows.

• Work with risk, compliance, operations, and finance teams to make sure AI systems are practical and meet regulatory requirements.

• Track and apply new AI developments relevant to fintech and B2B trade.

• Set the technical bar for AI at Qawafel and grow into leading the team as the function expands.

Requirements

• Principal or staff-level applied AI engineering experience.

• Experience shipping production AI systems in fintech, banking, or another regulated environment.

• Hands-on experience building and operating production AI systems.

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience designing complex systems.

• Experience with LLMs, RAG, embeddings, vector databases, AI agents, and document intelligence (including multimodal models).

• Experience defining evaluation, observability, and monitoring for non-deterministic systems.

• Strong instincts around data handling, privacy, and auditability in regulated contexts.

• Comfortable as a senior IC today and open to moving into a team lead role as the function grows.

• Strong written and verbal communication in English and Arabic.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in SME financing, invoice financing, supply chain finance, embedded finance, or lending platforms.

• Experience working in startups, scaleups, or fast-moving product teams.

• Prior experience leading or mentoring engineers, with appetite to grow into a management role.

What We're Looking For

A senior AI engineer who can hold engineering, product, risk, and business needs in their head at the same time. Someone who can take a complex financing workflow and turn it into a product that is simple to use and dependable in production. Someone who wants to build it themselves now and grow the team that scales it later.