The posting
Looking for Philippines-based candidates
Job Role: AI Business Transformation Specialist
Compensation range: USD $3,000–$4,000/month, depending on experience
Engagement type: Direct Full-Time Employment with the client
Contract: Initial 2-year contract, with potential extension by mutual agreement
Location: Dili, Timor-Leste – On-site
Work Schedule: Full-time, aligned with the client’s business hours. East Timor is 1 hour advance to PH Time)
Who We Are: At Hunt St, we help Australian companies hire top remote talent in the Philippines. For this role, you will be engaged directly by the client as an independent contractor. We are not an outsourcing agency. All of our roles are 100% remote so you'll be able to work from home.
Who The Client Is: a well-established business group based in East Timor with over 24 years of operating history. The company employs approximately 200 team members and operates across retail, hospitality, and distribution, with distribution representing the majority of its revenue.
As the organization continues to grow, they are investing in AI and automation to improve operational efficiency, enhance customer engagement, and drive measurable business outcomes. This is an opportunity to build an AI and automation function from the ground up and create a lasting impact across multiple business units.
Role Overview: We are seeking an experienced AI and automation practitioner to be the Group's internal owner of its AI and automation work.
This is a hands-on role. You will be doing the work yourself, not directing others to do it, and reporting to senior management. The realistic horizon is 18 to 24 months to get the Group from where it is now to a position where its data is usable, its routine manual work is automated, and a small number of AI tools are in daily use.
You will spend the initial months learning how each department works and getting the Group's data into usable shape, before building anything substantial. The Group's main systems are a warehouse management system, MYOB, and the ONSIGHT ordering app. They are long-standing systems with limited documentation.
This role suits someone who is comfortable being the only technical person in the room, comfortable working in a small market a long way from a large tech community, and equally comfortable saying that something will not work.
What The Role Does Not Include: This role is not expected to build or maintain two-way connections between the sales, warehouse and accounting systems. If the Group takes that on, it will be resourced separately.
If The Group Engages An External Technology Partner: The Group may engage an external technology partner for the larger platform work. If it goes ahead, this role becomes the Group's single technical counterpart to that partner: setting requirements, providing access and data, attending working sessions, reviewing every deliverable against specification, accepting or rejecting it in writing, and taking ownership of it afterwards so the Group can run and extend what it paid for without depending on the supplier.
If that happens, build work continues at a reduced pace while the partner engagement is active.
Benefits & Perks:
- Accommodation: Single shared accommodation in Dili provided as part of the package
- Annual Flight: One return flight to your home country per year
- Annual Leave: 28 calendar days of paid annual leave
- 13th-Month Salary: Provided upon completion of 12 months of service
- Medical Insurance: Provided by the company
- Visa & Work Authorisation: Company-assisted visa and work authorisation process
Key Responsibilities:
Find out how the business runs and get the data into shape
- Document how each department does its work, step by step, and learn how the reports that management relies on get produced: who makes each one, how long it takes them, and where the numbers come from.
- Assess the condition of the data in the sales, warehouse and accounting systems, and improve its quality and structure, starting with records that do not reconcile between systems. Nothing useful gets built until this is done.
- Automate the ordinary work
- Record where the business stands on the measures it already tracks, before changing anything.
- Identify and build practical automation that removes repetitive manual work across departments, using established tools.
- Prioritize small, visible improvements with daily operational impact ahead of large projects.
- Work directly with department managers on day-to-day operational effectiveness.
- Measure improvements against the recorded baseline, not against an estimate.
Build reporting and a small number of AI tools
- Once the sales, warehouse and accounting data has been cleaned up, set up the reports that management needs so they update themselves instead of being assembled by hand. Reduce the Group's dependence on manual spreadsheet reporting.
- Build two or three internal AI assistants and support them in daily use.
- Evaluate AI platforms and tools against the Group's size, systems and budget, and say when something is not worth buying.
Get people using it
- Run practical training sessions for the managers and staff who will use what you build.
- Identify and support people within departments who can carry the training forward.
- Track real usage from system logs, not from self-report.
Own what you build
- Document everything well enough that a competent person who has not seen it before can maintain it.
- Hold all accounts, subscriptions and access in the Group's name.
- Draft the Group's rules for how AI and company data may be used, for management approval, then implement and enforce them. Maintain access controls and audit trails, and raise risks early and in writing.
Requirements
- 5+ years in AI, automation, systems implementation, business process improvement, data analytics or technology management
- Formal qualifications in computer science, information systems, data analytics, engineering or a related discipline.
- Experience assessing and improving the quality of messy business data.
- Practical experience connecting business systems that were not designed to work together, including systems without a modern API.
- Experience with workflow automation platforms such as Zapier, Make or Power Automate.
- Strong understanding of AI technologies and large language models, and the judgment to say when AI is not the right tool.
- Experience training non-technical staff to use what you built, and getting them to keep using it.
- Experience working within established companies and structured business environments, not only startups or agencies.
- Strong written communication. Much of this role is written specification, review and record keeping.
- Able to show examples of work you built yourself, and explain the parts that did not work.
- Willing and able to relocate permanently to Dili, Timor-Leste.
Benefits
- Accommodation: Single shared accommodation in Dili provided as part of the package
- Annual Flight: One return flight to your home country per year
- Annual Leave: 28 calendar days of paid annual leave
- 13th-Month Salary: Provided upon completion of 12 months of service
- Medical Insurance: Provided by the company
- Visa & Work Authorisation: Company-assisted visa and work authorisation process
