Platform · Dubai or Riyadh · Full time
Senior Backend Engineer
Design and build the services our clients’ operations run on, in a small senior team that owns the outcome.
About the role
You’ll join one of our platform teams, usually five to nine people, working on a modernisation or reliability engagement for a logistics, retail or financial services client. Right now that might mean replacing a payments core service by service, or rebuilding a routing engine before peak.
You’ll spend most of your time writing and reviewing code, and the rest with the client’s engineers: pairing, shaping the next slice, and making sure they can run what we build. Engagements last six to eighteen months, and you’ll have a say in what you work on next.
You’ll report to Jonas Becker’s platform group, with a tech lead on your team and a mentor outside it.
The work and you
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What you’ll do
A typical month, though no two engagements are the same.
- Design and build backend services, mostly in Kotlin, Java or Go
- Pair with client engineers every week and review their code
- Run services in production, including a fair share of on-call
- Break large changes into slices that ship within weeks
- Write things down: decisions, runbooks and handover notes
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What you’ll bring
If you meet most of these, please apply. We’d rather hear from you than not.
- Six or more years building backend systems in production
- Strong experience with one JVM language or Go
- Event-driven systems, relational databases and the cloud
- Comfort explaining trade-offs to people who aren’t engineers
- Happy to be based in Dubai or Riyadh; we sponsor your residence visa and your family’s
Salary and package
Every salary band at Kestrel is published inside the company and on every job advert.
Pay and benefits
- Base salary, DubaiMonthly and tax-free, our published band for Senior Engineer
- AED 38,000–46,000
- Base salary, RiyadhSame band, no location adjustment
- AED 38,000–46,000
- Profit sharePaid every June, the same percentage for everyone
- Up to 8%
- Visa and medical insuranceFor you and your family
- Included
Your offer sits within the band based on the working session, not on what you earn now. We don’t ask for your salary history.
How we hire
Four steps, usually two to three weeks from application to offer.
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Apply
Send your CV or a link and a few lines on why. We reply to everyone within five working days.
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Intro call
Thirty minutes with the hiring manager about the role, the team and what you want next.
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Working session
Ninety minutes pairing on a real problem with two of us. No take-home tests, no puzzles.
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Meet the team
An hour with people you’d work with, in the studio or on video. An offer within 48 hours.
Apply for Senior Backend Engineer
It goes straight to Jonas Becker, CTO, who reads every application.
Not quite the right role?
We hire all year round. Send us a note at jobs@kestrel.ae and tell us what you’re good at.