Engineering Lead - Backend

JUSTLIFE · ENGINEERING · DUBAI, UAE

Engineering Lead, Backend – Dubai

Lead and grow the backend team behind the super app millions across the GCC use to run their homes.

Every month, hundreds of thousands of people across the GCC book a cleaner, a beauty service, a handyman, or a healthcare visit through Justlife.

As we scale across the GCC, we’re hiring an engineering lead to represent Engineering in our growing Dubai office and own the backend there. You’ll be responsible for our backend engineers, own delivery and technical quality, stay close to the code, and drive how the Dubai team puts AI to work — working alongside our other engineering leads and reporting to the VP of Engineering.

The Role

You’ll lead a delivery team in our new Dubai office — backend and mobile developers, a product manager, and QAs working as one unit, with backend engineers as your direct reports. You’ll own roadmap execution and technical quality, partner day to day with product management, and be the engineering voice in every cross-department conversation in the room.

This is a hands-on leadership role, not a hands-off one. We expect you to set the technical bar, grow the engineers who report to you, and stay close enough to the code to keep the technical thread — while owning delivery the rest of the business can rely on.

What You’ll Do in Your First 6 Months

• Build out the Dubai delivery team. Bring backend, mobile, PM, and QA together into one predictable delivery unit, with your backend engineer(s) as direct reports — and a clear plan to grow the team.
• Own roadmap execution. Turn the roadmap into shipped releases on a cadence the rest of the business can plan around.
• Raise technical quality. Set the bar for architecture, code review, and reliability across the backend — measured, not asserted.
• Develop your people. Grow the engineers who report to you through clear expectations, structured 1:1s, and real feedback.
• Be the engineering voice in the room. Make engineering an active, decisive voice in every cross-department discussion in Dubai.
• Drive AI initiatives. Lead how the Dubai team adopts AI — in the product and in how the team works day to day.

What We’re Looking For

We’re hiring a technical leader who still ships — strong on the engineering craft and genuinely energised by leading people and delivery. Both halves matter equally.

Technical depth (must-haves)

• Proficiency in Java.
• Experience with MVC frameworks such as Spring Boot.
• Experience with microservices architecture, and a solid grasp of MVC and RESTful services.
• Strong knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and containerization.
• AWS knowledge.
• A real habit of using AI tools to solve problems and improve how the team works.
• Still hands-on — you lead delivery and you still code where it counts.

Leadership & delivery (must-haves)

• You’ve managed engineers — owned a team’s delivery cadence and been accountable for what shipped.
• Evidence of growing engineers: setting expectations, running structured 1:1s, giving honest feedback, handling performance.
• You can turn a roadmap into predictable releases and communicate trade-offs clearly to product and leadership.
• Genuinely energised by the delivery and people side of engineering management — not only the technical side.
• Strong communication skills and stakeholder management— you represent engineering clearly to product, peer leads, and the leadership team, and keep stakeholders aligned.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience building or scaling an engineering team in a fast-growing or startup environment.
• Background in consumer apps, marketplaces, or service platforms.
• Experience standing up an engineering presence in a new office or market.

Our Stack

• Language & frameworks: Java and PHP; Spring Boot and other MVC frameworks.
• Architecture: Microservices, MVC, and RESTful services.
• Data: Relational and NoSQL databases.
• Infrastructure: AWS, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization.
• AI: AI tooling built into how we solve problems and improve our processes.

What It’s Like Here

You’ll join an established engineering leadership team and help grow our Dubai office. Decisions get made in the room, not over email. You’ll work directly with product, peer engineering managers, and leadership — and our co-founders are part of the hiring process, because the people building the company want to meet the people building the product. We work on-site, five days a week, with occasional travel (1–2 times a year). Our culture runs on one idea: #everydaybetter.

Why Justlife, Why Now

We started in 2015 by digitalising home cleaning in the UAE. Today we operate across 10+ cities, with 200+ full-time employees, 5K+ service professionals, and over 15 million sessions delivered — and we’re one of the region’s AI pioneers, building toward the most loved super app for home services in the GCC.

The team that got us here was small. The team you’ll build and lead in Dubai is what gets us to 10x. If you still love being close to the code, if you can own delivery and technical quality at once, and if you want to build a team millions of people will rely on — let’s talk.

We read every application. We respond within 7 business days.

#everydaybetter

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