Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer

Salt; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 300,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt in Abu Dhabi is seeking a hands-on Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer to shape the architecture and delivery of complex enterprise platforms and automation workflows. This is not purely managerial; you will stay engaged across design, coding and production delivery.

You will guide a small engineering team, set standards for security, testing, CI/CD, observability and reliability while driving practical solutions from ambiguous requirements.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 4+ years at Staff/Principal/Lead Engineer or equivalent.
• Strong backend and distributed-systems expertise.
• Experience with APIs, databases, microservices and enterprise integration.
• Cloud, Kubernetes, containers and CI/CD experience.
• Hands-on production engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture, system design, APIs, data models and technical delivery.
• Design complex workflows, state management and human approval processes.
• Build scalable enterprise integrations, including ERP/SAP where relevant.
• Lead engineers while remaining hands-on with code and reviews.
• Establish standards for security, testing, CI/CD, observability and reliability.
• Translate vague business requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI/LLMs within enterprise workflows.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

APIs

Databases

Microservices

Enterprise integration

Cloud

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Security & observability

Production engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Job description

Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer — Enterprise Platforms & Automation

Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE | Full-time

The Role

Our client is seeking a hands‑on Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer to lead the architecture and delivery of complex enterprise platforms, automation and workflow‑driven products.

This is not a pure management role. You will lead a small engineering team while remaining hands‑on across architecture, design, coding and production delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Own architecture, system design, APIs, data models and technical delivery.
• Design complex workflows, state management and human approval processes.
• Build scalable enterprise integrations, including ERP/SAP where relevant.
• Lead engineers while remaining hands‑on with code and technical reviews.
• Establish standards for security, testing, CI/CD, observability and reliability.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Identify appropriate opportunities to leverage AI/LLMs within enterprise workflows.

Requirements

• 10+ years software engineering experience.
• 4+ years at Staff, Principal, Lead Engineer or equivalent level.
• Strong backend and distributed‑systems experience.
• Expertise in APIs, databases, microservices and enterprise integration.
• Experience with workflow-heavy or transaction-heavy platforms.
• Cloud, Kubernetes, containers and CI/CD experience.
• Strong security, reliability and observability mindset.
• Recent hands‑on production engineering experience.

Strong Advantage

• Workflow/BPM or state‑machine experience.
• Event‑driven architecture.
• ERP/SAP integrations.
• Azure.
• LLM/GenAI or agentic AI in production.
• Financial services, government or other regulated environments.

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