Engineering Manager

talabat; Dubai; On-site; AED 279,000 - 390,600; Full time

Job summary

A leading online food ordering platform in Dubai is seeking an experienced technical leader to guide a talented engineering team. The role involves understanding customer needs, driving software solutions, and mentoring engineers in a dynamic environment. Ideal candidates have over 6 years in software engineering, with a focus on agile practices and technical leadership. They should be capable of fostering innovation and delivering quality outcomes to enhance customer experience while managing complex systems effectively.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, preferably in Extreme Programming environment.
• 2+ years of technical leadership and people management experience.
• Proficient in automated end-to-end quality testing.

Responsibilities

• Understand business needs and drive desired outcomes.
• Lead a talented group of engineers to deliver software solutions.
• Mentor and coach engineering talent in a competitive environment.

Skills

Product sense

Mentoring

Agile values

Stakeholder management

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Job description

A Little Bit About Talabat

talabat is the leading online food and groceries ordering platform in MENA, operating in 9 countries across the region. Founded in 2004 by a small group of entrepreneurs in Kuwait, talabat’s success expanded to the rest of the GCC region, Egypt & Jordan, making it the largest and most popular food ordering app. With over 4,000+ employees and millions of users, we deliver hundreds of thousands of orders every day. We are part of the Delivery Hero network building the next generation of online delivery platforms across the globe. Our network is truly international with engineering teams in 13 countries and operations in 40+ countries.

Job Description

A little bit about our engineering culture

We love finding new ways to shorten feedback loops, create together and make an impact. Our engineering culture and practices are based on eXtreme Programming (XP), Domain‑Driven Design, Lean and Continuous Delivery. We believe that the assumption behind the “Speed vs Quality” mindset is flawed, and that you can both have your cake and eat it too. For us, quality enables speed. Not in 2 years, but now. Pair and mob programming help us deliver more value sooner and find joy in our work through productive human connections. Engineers who understand our product and business better understand the context of their work, which helps them innovate, deliver more value to our customers and find purpose.

Role Summary

• Understand customer/business needs and drive desired outcomes, create strategy to deliver value.
• Lead, inspire and empower a talented group of engineers to self‑organize, discover, innovate, implement, deploy and own end‑to‑end complex software solutions.
• Develop and grow engineering talent through effective mentoring, coaching, and retention strategies in a hyper‑growing, highly competitive environment.
• Guide your team in creating software as a solution to end‑to‑end domain problems, ensuring value in small batches and adherence to non‑functional requirements such as availability, scalability, latency and efficiency aligned with internal engineering standards.
• Guide discovery, planning and execution to deliver value to customers in small batches.

Qualifications

• Great product sense for selecting impactful opportunities for customers.
• Ability to balance continuous product discovery and delivery.
• Experience building & leading cross‑functional, empowered and self‑organized multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Ability to guide and elevate talent via mentoring and coaching.
• Strong stakeholder and dependency management through proactive communication.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of creating compelling narratives to engage key stakeholders.
• Humble, curious, open‑minded with a growth mindset, thriving on continuous feedback.
• Good understanding of lean/agile values, principles and associated practices.
• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, preferably within Extreme Programming environment (TDD, Pair Programming, Simple Design, Continuous Refactoring).
• 2+ years of hands‑on technical leadership and people management experience.
• Experience in Distributed Systems Architecture (Microservices, Event‑Driven, RESTful services).
• Experience building, maintaining & improving with Trunk‑Based Development and Continuous Delivery.
• Solid experience in designing, implementing, monitoring, and scaling web apps and APIs.
• Solid understanding of the full mobile development lifecycle.
• Strong familiarity with the general mobile landscape, architectures, trends and emerging tech.
• Proficient in testing with a focus on automated end‑to‑end quality.
• Experience with cloud platforms, preferably AWS.
• Strong understanding of quality, performance, monitoring, alerting and security standards.