Engineering Lead

Salt; Dubai; On-site; AED 420,000 - 700,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt seeks a hands-on Engineering Lead to scale its real-time AI products from a small team in Dubai to a larger engineering group.

You will combine architecture oversight with coding, lead hiring and people management, and own core Python backend, Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, and observability to support high-scale AI/ML workloads. This role reports to the CTO and requires strong debugging of production incidents and collaboration with product and infra teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years leading engineers with hiring & people-management responsibility.
• Production experience with AI/ML/LLM systems, model serving or GPU infrastructure.
• Comfortable with architecture, code reviews, debugging production incidents and still writing code.
• Proven experience hiring, developing and managing engineering teams.

Skills

Python

Backend

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

GitOps

Observability

Distributed systems

AI/ML/LLM

Model serving

GPU infrastructure

Architecture

Code reviews

Production incident debugging

Hiring & management

Tools

WebRTC/SIP

Job description

My client is a fast-growing AI company building real-time AI Voice, Agentic AI and Computer Vision products, and they’re looking for a hands‑on Engineering Lead to help scale the engineering team from ~7 to 20 people.

What they’re looking for:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• 2+ years leading engineers with genuine hiring & people-management responsibility
• Strong Python/backend engineering experience
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, GitOps & observability
• Experience building and operating high‑scale, real‑time or distributed systems
• Production experience with AI/ML/LLM systems, model serving or GPU infrastructure
• Comfortable with architecture, code reviews, debugging production incidents and still writing code
• Proven experience hiring, developing and managing engineering teams
• Dubai-based / willing to work office-based Experience with WebRTC/SIP, voice AI, computer vision, sovereign/on‑prem deployments or regulated environments would be a strong plus.
• Reports to: CTO
• This is not a traditional management role – the ideal person