Lead Software Engineer - Backend | Python

Lead Software Engineer - Backend | Python
On-site | Abu Dhabi

AppliedAI is a pioneering AI technology company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, committed to innovation and excellence in artificial intelligence solutions in regulated industries such as healthcare, insurance, government, and financial services.
Opus is the world's first Knowledge Work AI platform. Built by AppliedAI to pioneer Supervised Automation, a human-in-the-loop model where AI handles repetitive, structured tasks while human experts provide crucial oversight at defined intervals.
The platform uses its proprietary Large Work Model to generate and orchestrate outcome-based workflows, enabling a dramatic reduction in the cost of knowledge work and allowing human talent to focus on high-value, creative, and judgement-intensive activities.

Position Overview:
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will own significant workstreams within the Opus platform, taking full technical accountability from architecture through to production deployment. You will lead a small, cross-functional team of approximately four engineers — spanning backend and frontend disciplines — while remaining deeply hands-on in the design, development, and review of complex backend systems.
This is a 70% technical, 30% leadership role suited to an engineer who wants to stay close to the code while growing their impact through others.
The ideal candidate brings 8–10+ years of software engineering experience, exceptional depth in Python and backend systems design, and a track record of leading engineers through complex, high-stakes delivery. A grounding in strong software engineering fundamentals is essential; experience applying AI-assisted development tools and workflows is a valued plus.

Key Responsibilities:
Technical Leadership &
Systems Design
- Own the end-to-end technical delivery of assigned platform workstreams, from requirements and architecture through to deployment and post-release iteration.
- Lead systems design for complex, distributed, high-throughput backend services, ensuring decisions are principled, scalable, and well-documented.
- Set and enforce architectural standards across your team, including API design, data modelling, service boundaries, and inter-service communication patterns.
- Provide technical direction and hands-on contribution in equal measure — reviewing code, unblocking engineers, and writing production-grade code yourself.
- Identify and resolve systemic risks, technical debt, and performance bottlenecks proactively.

Backend Engineering
- Design and build scalable Python microservices using event-driven and asynchronous architectures.
- Architect and implement high-performance REST APIs using modern Python frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, or similar).
- Lead the design of real-time data streaming and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis Streams, or similar).
- Oversee asynchronous task processing using distributed task queues (Celery, RQ, or similar).
- Define and govern ETL workflows and data pipelines using orchestration tools such as Airflow, Prefect, or Dagster.
- Drive database design and optimisation across relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis) systems for high-throughput, mission-critical workloads.
- Champion observability, ensuring services are instrumented with appropriate logging, tracing, and monitoring.

Code Quality &
Architecture
- Establish and uphold engineering standards for code quality, testing, and documentation across your team.
- Lead code reviews with a focus on correctness, maintainability, and architectural integrity.
- Apply and advocate for SOLID principles, domain-driven design, and modular architecture practices.
- Drive modernisation and refactoring efforts on legacy components where required.

Team Leadership &
Collaboration
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of c. four engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, rigour, and continuous improvement.
- Conduct regular 1:1s, provide constructive feedback, and support the career growth of your direct reports.
- Partner closely with product managers, frontend engineers, ML teams, and DevOps to deliver features end-to-end.
- Communicate project status, risks, and technical decisions clearly to stakeholders and engineering leadership.

DevOps &
Delivery
- Champion CI/CD best practices and contribute to deployment automation and pipeline maturity.
- Oversee containerised application deployment using Docker and Kubernetes across multiple environments.
- Ensure secure, reliable, and observable services in line with the demands of regulated industry deployments.

Continuous Learning &
Innovation
- Stay current with advances in backend engineering, distributed systems, and developer tooling — including AI-assisted development practices.
- Evaluate and propose new technologies and approaches that can improve platform quality or engineering velocity.
- Share knowledge across the wider engineering organisation through documentation, presentations, and mentorship.

Qualifications:
Experience:
- 8–10+ years of software engineering experience, with strong seniority in backend and distributed systems development.
- Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams or workstreams, with direct line management or technical lead responsibility.
- Proven track record of owning complex software projects end-to-end in a production environment.

Skills:
- Deep expertise in Python; proficiency in TypeScript and Node.js (NestJS, Next.js) is advantageous.
- Strong command of systems design principles: distributed architectures, event-driven systems, API design, and data modelling, with sufficient frontend exposure (React, Next.js, or similar) to lead and collaborate effectively across a mixed backend/frontend team.
- Experience with SQL (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis) databases.
- Solid understanding of authentication and authorisation patterns (OAuth2, JWT, RBAC).
- Proficient with Git, Docker, and CI/CD tooling; exposure to Kubernetes and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP) is a plus.
- Comfortable leading in an agile, fast-paced product environment.
- Experience with or interest in AI-assisted development tools and workflows is a plus; strong engineering fundamentals are the foundation.

Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.

Benefits:
- Opportunity to work with a leading AI technology company.
- Collaborative and innovative work environment.
- Growing, entrepreneurial and forward-thinking culture.
- Career growth and professional development opportunities.
- Exposure to a thriving ecosystem working from our Abu Dhabi HQ.
- 21 days of paid annual leave.
- Comprehensive private health insurance.
- Visa sponsorship for international candidates.