Platform Engineer (Backend Enablement & Tooling)

The Role:

Ziina is looking for a Platform Engineer, Backend Enablement & Tooling to join our team. This is a foundational role with the opportunity to define how internal tooling, developer experience, and backend quality are built at Ziina from the ground up. You'll have direct impact on how every engineer builds, tests, and ships software — shaping the golden paths, shared libraries, and quality systems that scale across the entire engineering organization. We're at a major inflection point in our growth, and we're looking for the right person to set the standard for how backend software is built here as we scale.

As part of a small, agile team, our ideal candidate is a creative problem-solver with the vision to build from the ground up and the skill to own systems end-to-end. You'll thrive in our fast-paced environment by making sound tradeoffs and focusing on high-impact solutions. We're looking for someone who is as ambitious as we are to deliver high-quality products to our users. In short, we want owners who are ready to build big things with us.

As a Platform Engineer, Backend Enablement & Tooling at Ziina you will:

• Build internal tools, service templates, and shared libraries that define the golden paths for how backend services are built at Ziina

• Improve backend developer workflows — local development, debugging, and testing — so engineers can iterate quickly and confidently

• Design and maintain testing frameworks and CI-integrated quality systems that give engineers fast, trustworthy signals on their changes

• Develop self-service capabilities for common engineering workflows so teams can move independently without platform bottlenecks

• Improve visibility into system quality and release confidence across the engineering organization

• Partner directly with engineering teams to identify friction in their day-to-day and solve it through better tooling

To succeed in this role, you likely:

• Bring 3+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, Backend Engineering, or Developer Experience roles

• Have strong backend engineering skills, ideally in Typescript/Node.js, and a deep understanding of microservices and service-to-service communication patterns

• Have hands-on experience building internal tooling, shared libraries, or service templates that other engineers actively use

• Are experienced with testing frameworks, CI integration, and building quality signals that engineers trust

• Have a product mindset when it comes to internal tools — you think about your colleagues as users and measure success by their productivity

• Use the latest AI tools and technologies to boost your productivity

• Are based in, or open to relocating to, the UAE

What would amaze us

• Proven experience building developer platforms or tooling at fintech or other high-scale engineering organizations

• A track record of creating golden paths, service templates, or shared libraries that were widely adopted across an engineering org

• History of measurably improving engineering velocity, release confidence, or code quality through tooling investments

• Experience shaping engineering standards, testing practices, or quality frameworks in a fast-growing environment

• Active engagement in the tech community through open source contributions, conference speaking, or technical writing

Our tech stack

We’ve built a modular architecture with the principles of reliability, scalability, and maintainability in mind. Our current stack is:

• Typescript, Node.js and Nest.js for our main application’s backend.

• Swift/SwiftUI for our iOS app, Kotlin for our Android app.

• Next.js, React and Typescript for our web applications.

• GraphQL Federation for our client-facing APIs and Kafka for our inter-service communication.

• PostgresSQL for consistent and durable storage, Redis for quick fetching, Elasticsearch for quick searching.

• AWS for hosting our cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes for orchestrating our workloads.

• Terraform for IaC.

• Github Actions for CI/CD.

About Ziina

Ziina’s mission is to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East. We are building MENA’s consumer and SMB financial platform, starting with a peer-to-peer and merchant wallet. Our team have backgrounds from Apple, Uber, Stripe, Klarna, Revolut, Yandex, and Nubank. Ziina’s payments volumes have grown by 10x YoY for the last two years. The team have built a product that is beloved by the UAE and is the recipient of 8 international design awards, including the Red Dot Award and the UX Design Award. Our last round was a $22 million Series A from top-tier investors globally including Altos Ventures, Fintech Collective, Activant, Long Journey Ventures and Y Combinator. Our angel investors include early employees and executives at Revolut, Stripe, Venmo, Brex, Checkout.com, Notion, and Deel.

Join us in shaping the future of financial freedom. Every role here is an opportunity to make a real impact. Let’s build something that matters together.