Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer – Enterprise Platforms & Automation

Salt Digital Recruitment; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 300,000 - 480,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt Digital Recruitment is assisting a client in Abu Dhabi to appoint an Engineering Lead / Principal Engineer. You will own architecture and delivery of enterprise platforms while remaining hands-on across coding and reviews.

You will guide a small team, shape APIs, data models, and workflows; drive security, CI/CD and observability; and explore AI/LLMs within workflows. Strong backend, distributed systems, and ERP/SAP integration experience are essential.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 4+ years at Staff, Principal, Lead Engineer, or equivalent.
• 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.

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.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

APIs

Microservices

Cloud

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Security mindset

Observability

Hands-on coding

Tools

Azure

Job description

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.