Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer

Salt; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 420,000 - 660,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt seeks a hands-on Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer to own the architecture and delivery of complex enterprise digital products and automation platforms in Abu Dhabi. This role remains technically hands-on while leading a small team and owning delivery from architecture through production.

You will define system boundaries, design patterns for long-running workflows, and establish standards for testing, security, and operability in a high-trust environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience.
• 4+ years in a senior technical-lead, staff, principal or equivalent role.
• Experience with backend engineering and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Define system architecture, service boundaries, API contracts and data models.
• Design workflow and state-management patterns for long-running processes.
• Lead backend and full-stack engineers while contributing hands-on design and code review.
• Build integration patterns with enterprise systems and ERP.
• Establish engineering standards for testing, observability, security, CI/CD and production readiness.

Skills

Backend

Distributed systems

APIs

Cloud-native

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Security

Observability

Code review

Data modeling

Tools

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Employment: Full-time 12 month contract to perm

The Role

We are seeking a hands-on Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer to lead the architecture

and delivery of complex enterprise digital products and automation platforms.

This is not a coordination-only engineering-management role. The successful candidate

will remain technically hands-on while leading a small engineering team and owning

technical delivery from architecture through production.

The products combine modern application engineering, complex business workflows,

enterprise integrations, data and selectively applied AI.

What You Will Own

• Define system architecture, service boundaries, API contracts and data models.
• Design workflow and state-management patterns for long-running business processes.
• Establish clear boundaries between deterministic business logic, workflow orchestration, human approvals and AI-assisted functionality.
• Lead backend and full-stack engineers while remaining hands-on with design, code and code review.
• Build integration patterns with ERP and other enterprise systems.
• Establish engineering standards for testing, observability, security, CI/CD and operational readiness.
• Ensure systems are resilient, auditable and appropriate for a high-trust
• Translate incomplete business requirements into practical technical designs and delivery plans.
• Own technical readiness from initial implementation through production operation.
• Work closely with product, business, security, platform and architecture teams.

Required Experience

• 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience.
• 4+ years in a senior technical-lead, staff, principal or equivalent role.
• Strong backend engineering background.
• Distributed systems, APIs, relational databases and enterprise integration.
• Experience designing workflow-heavy or transaction-heavy systems.
• Cloud-native architecture, containers, Kubernetes and CI/CD.
• Modern authentication and authorization patterns.
• Strong judgment around reliability, security, observability and testing.

*** Only successful candidates will be contacted ***