Lead Backend Engineer - PayLink

Salla; Makkah Region; On-site; SAR 420,000 - 640,000; Full time

Job summary

Salla is seeking a hands-on engineering lead to set technical direction, own code quality, and build payment-critical backend services on a modern Java stack. You will guide and grow a team of backend engineers, shaping architecture and product direction.

The role requires hands-on Java/Spring Boot expertise, fintech/payments experience, and leadership that mentors engineers while delivering robust APIs with strong security and reliability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of Java backend experience with Spring Boot.
• Proven technical leadership while hands-on in code.
• Hands-on payments/fintech experience on real systems.
• Experience with at least one payment processor (MPGS, Cybersource, or mada).

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for backend engineering on a modern Java / Spring Boot stack.
• Design and build payment‑critical backend services and APIs.
• Own code quality: standards, code review, testing and release readiness.
• Ensure correctness, reliability and security across the services the team owns.
• Mentor and grow backend engineers, and work closely with architecture and product.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Technical Leadership

Payments / Fintech

Microservices

REST APIs

Kubernetes / CI-CD

AI Coding Tools

Tools

Claude Code

Job description

We're looking for a hands-on engineering lead who sets technical direction, owns code quality, and builds payment-critical backend services on a modern Java stack, while guiding and growing a team of backend engineers.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for backend engineering on a modern Java / Spring Boot stack
• Design and build payment-critical backend services and APIs
• Own code quality: standards, code review, testing and release readiness
• Ensure correctness, reliability and security across the services the team owns
• Mentor and grow backend engineers, and work closely with architecture and product

Requirements

• 8+ years in Java backend with strong Spring Boot
• Proven technical leadership while remaining hands-on in the code
• Hands‑on payments / fintech experience is required — you have worked on real payment or financial-transaction systems
• Hands‑on experience with at least one payment processor or gateway (e.g. MPGS, Cybersource or mada). This is a requirement for this role
• Strong microservices, REST API design, relational databases and automated testing
• Delivery on containers (Kubernetes) with CI/CD
• AI‑augmented engineering — you actively use AI coding tools such as Claude Code in your day-to-day development. This is a requirement for this role

Nice to have

• Experience with more than one payment processor / gateway
• Cloud platforms (OCI, AWS or Azure); event‑driven systems (Kafka)