Lead Software Engineer - Financial Services

Foodics; Riyad Al Khabra; On-site; SAR 260,000 - 480,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses

Equity/ Shares

Learning stipend

Job summary

Foodics is seeking a Lead Engineer for its Financial Services team to own problems end to end, crafting scalable backend, data, and frontend solutions. You will partner with Product, Design, Risk, and Compliance to drive direction and quality, while embedding AI-first practices across development and operations.

Expect to define technical roadmaps, ensure security and observability, and mentor engineers as you scale systems that process real money in a regulated environment.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience with production systems ownership.
• Genuine full-stack ability: backend services, data models, and frontends.
• A product mindset focused on user and business outcomes.
• Technology-agnostic and quick to learn new stacks.
• AI-first habits: use AI tools and agents in daily work.
• Strong systems thinking: distributed systems, APIs, data. considerations.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own problems end to end from discovery to launch and iteration across backend, API, data, and frontend.
• Identify and fix gaps that impact scalability and reliability under high volume.
• Shape product direction by partnering with Product, Design, Risk, and Compliance.
• Set and uphold technical bar for secure, auditable, observable systems handling real money.
• Lead the AI-first shift, evaluating where AI can improve products and workflows.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers to raise design and code quality.
• Choose appropriate languages, frameworks, and platforms based on the problem.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

AI-first mindset

Systems thinking

Clear communication

Ownership & accountability

Problem discovery & ownership

Tools

Containers

CI/CD

Observability

Job description

Who Are We

We Are Foodics! a leading restaurant management ecosystem and payment tech provider. Founded in 2014 with headquarters in Riyadh and offices across 5 countries, including UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait. We are currently serving customers and partners in over 35 different countries worldwide. Our innovative products have successfully processed over 6 billion (yes, billion with a B) orders so far! making Foodics one of the most rapidly evolving SaaS companies to ever emerge from the MENA region. Also Foodics has achieved three rounds of funding, with the latest raising $170 million in the largest SaaS funding round in MENA, boosting its innovation capabilities to better serve business owners.

The Role in a Nutshell

Foodics Financial Services builds the money products that help restaurants and merchants across the region run their businesses: payments, capital, and cashflow tools. We operate in a regulated environment (SAMA in Saudi Arabia, with expansion into the UAE), which means we care deeply about reliability, security, and correctness. We also move fast and ship products merchants actually feel.

We're looking for a Lead Engineer who thinks like a product owner, builds like a full-stack engineer, and works AI-first by default.

What Will You Do

• Own problems end to end. Take ambiguous business problems from discovery through design, build, launch, and iteration. Work across backend services, APIs, data, and frontend as needed.


• Spot the gaps. Find what's missing or broken on both sides: a flow that confuses merchants, a reconciliation process that doesn't scale, a service that will fail under the next 10x of volume. Then drive the fix, even when nobody asked.


• Shape product direction. Partner with Product, Design, Risk, and Compliance to define what we build and why. Challenge requirements, propose alternatives, and bring data to the conversation.


• Set the technical bar. Lead architecture decisions for systems that handle real money: idempotency, consistency, auditability, security, and observability built in from day one.


• Lead the AI-first shift. Use AI tools and agents to multiply your own output, and help the team adopt them well. Identify where AI can improve our products and our engineering workflow, and build it.


• Multiply the team. Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, raise the quality of design reviews and code reviews, and make the people around you better.


• Pick the right tool. Evaluate and adopt languages, frameworks, and platforms based on the problem, not habit.

What Are We Looking For

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping and owning production systems.


• Genuine full-stack ability: comfortable designing backend services and data models, and building solid, usable frontends.


• A product mindset: you care about the user and the business outcome, not just the ticket. You can explain why something should be built, not only how.


• Technology-agnostic: you've worked across multiple languages and stacks and pick up new ones quickly.


• AI-first habits: you use AI coding assistants, agents, and LLM APIs daily and have opinions about where they help and where they don't.


• Strong systems thinking: distributed systems, APIs, databases, and the trade-offs between them.


• Clear communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.


• High ownership and comfort with ambiguity.

Nice to have

• Experience in fintech, payments, lending, or other regulated domains (PCI DSS, SAMA, or similar).


• Experience building AI-powered product features (LLM integrations, RAG, agents, evaluation).


• Cloud infrastructure and DevOps experience (containers, CI/CD, observability).


• Experience with B2B or merchant-facing products.

What We Offer You

We believe you will love working at Foodics!

• We offer highly competitive compensation packages, including bonuses and the potential for shares.


• We prioritize personal development and offer regular training and an annual learning stipend to tackle new challenges and grow your career in a hyper-growth environment.


• Join a talented team of over 30 nationalities working in 14 countries, and gain valuable experience in an exciting industry.


• We offer autonomy, mentoring, and challenging goals that create incredible opportunities for both you and the company.