Senior Software Engineer I

About the Role

Careem's Quick and Shops team owns the customer-facing backend experience for two of our fastest-growing verticals. We power everything a customer sees and interacts with inside the consumer app — from browsing to checkout — through a server-driven UI architecture that keeps our mobile and backend teams tightly aligned.

As a Senior Software Engineer I, you will take full ownership of backend domains, build reliable and scalable services, and collaborate closely with mobile engineers to deliver a seamless customer experience for millions of Careem users.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services powering the Quick and Shops customer experience.
• Write high-quality Golang code, delivering complete features and resolving bugs independently.
• Build and maintain REST APIs, service-to-service integrations, and gateway and configuration-driven systems.
• Own and evolve backend data models and catalog systems supporting our product verticals.
• Manage event-driven systems using Kafka and Avro schema evolution.
• Support AWS cloud infrastructure including S3, CloudFront, DNS, and certificate management.
• Participate in on-call rotations and debug production issues across highly distributed and decoupled systems.
• Mentor junior colleagues and drive cross-functional technical discussions across teams.
• Champion AI-assisted development tools as part of your daily engineering workflow.

What You'll Need

• Proven backend engineering experience at a mid-band level or above — this is not an entry-level role.
• Strong hands-on experience with Golang; candidates with deep experience in another modern language (Java, Kotlin, C#, C++) will be considered if they can demonstrate a clear ability to ramp up.
• Product-facing backend experience — you have built systems that directly serve end customers, not purely infrastructure or platform-isolated work.
• Experience with REST APIs, service-to-service integrations, and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with data modeling, Kafka, and Avro schema evolution.
• AWS cloud infrastructure exposure — S3, CloudFront, DNS, certificate management.
• On-call ownership and a track record of debugging complex issues across distributed systems independently.
• Strong communication skills, a collaborative mindset, and the ability to work autonomously without close supervision.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers and coordinating across cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have

• Understanding of server-driven UI paradigms.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Working knowledge of relational and non-relational databases.
• Familiarity with software engineering best practices: code reviews, source control, testing standards.

What we’ll provide you

We offer colleagues the opportunity to drive impact in the region while they learn and grow. As a full time Careem colleague, you will be able to:

• Work and learn from great minds by joining a community of inspiring colleagues.
• Put your passion to work in a purposeful organisation dedicated to creating impact in a region with a lot of untapped potential.
• Explore new opportunities to learn and grow every day.
• Work 4 days a week in office & 1 day from home, and remotely from any country in the world for 30 days a year with unlimited vacation days per year. (If you are in an individual contributor role in tech, you will have 2 office days a week and 3 to work from home.)
• Access to healthcare benefits and fitness reimbursements for health activities including gym, health club, and training classes.