Principal Backend Engineer

at  Property Finder

Founded by Michael Lahyani in 2005 as a magazine (Al Bab World), Property Finder today is a single technology platform and brand across multiple countries in the MENA region. We offer the most advanced tools and best-in-class user experience for homeseekers, real estate brokers, and developers. Property Finder’s most recent valuation secures our status among the Middle East’s emerging unicorns, affirming a growth-oriented identity.
Over the years, we’ve expanded our operations to Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and secured a strategic shareholding in Hepsiemlak, the leading property portal in Turkey. With over 600+ dedicated people in 6 regional offices, we facilitate more than 14 million monthly visits across our platforms, solidifying our position as a regional powerhouse in the proptech space.
As the pioneering portal for homeseekers in the region, we are on a mission to motivate and inspire people to live the life they deserve.

POSITION SUMMARY

We are looking for a talented Principal Backend Engineer to join our growing development team at Property Finder in Dubai. We believe in nurturing talent and we encourage creativity and autonomy where you are free to grow and develop your career in a fun, forward thinking and positive environment..
We expect our engineers to be passionate about technology and think of creative ways that they could benefit our business. In this role, you will be responsible for developing and maintaining high-quality, scalable back-end applications that power our core business functions.
We are big proponents of Agile development methods with small cross-functional teams fully empowered to take an idea from inception and to be able to deliver it fully tested into production with minimal outside disruptions. Because of this you will need to be able to work well with others in your team and outside of your team to be able to contribute meaningful ideas on how to best achieve your objectives and key results.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Over 8 years of experience in software engineering, with a strong emphasis on building distributed systems and scalable services.
• Proficient in languages such as Python, Golang, Java, and Node.js, with a deep understanding of distributed computing principles, data architecture, and scalable system design.
• Proven experience in technical leadership, with a successful history of mentoring and growing engineers with diverse background.
• In-depth knowledge of SLAs, system resiliency, and observability practices.
• Expertise in both analytical (e.g., Presto, S3, Snowflake) and transactional (e.g., MySQL, Aurora, MongoDB) storage systems.
• Experienced with public cloud platforms such as AWS.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

OTHER CAPABILITIES

• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail
• Excellent communication and teamwork abilities
• Self-motivated and able to work independently
• Passion for clean, efficient, and maintainable code
• Ability to mentor developers and contribute to the team’s growth
• Computer Science (or similar) education
• Serverless Framework
• Golang
• ElasticSearch
• Comfortable working with testing frameworks
• Message Queuing / RabbitMQ
• Memcached or Redis
• DynamoDB
• AWS Lambda
• AWS Step Functions

• Design, develop, and maintain highly distributed systems and scalable services.
• Engage in hands-on coding and thorough code reviews, utilizing languages like Python, Golang, and Node.js.
• Lead by example in setting technical direction, advocating for engineering best practices, and driving the adoption of cutting-edge technologies.
• Mentor and guide engineers throughout the organization, nurturing a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Architect robust systems that ensure high throughput, performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Implement robust observability practices, including monitoring, logging, and tracing, to maintain system health and performance.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including product management, data engineering, and DevOps, to align on strategic objectives and ensure project success.
• Establish and maintain comprehensive documentation and standards for system architecture, design, and operational procedures.
  The Person