Senior Software Engineering Manager

Company Overview

talabat is a major on-demand platform for food and non-food delivery across MENA. The business operates in 8 countries and handles hundreds of millions of orders every year. It is part of Delivery Hero, a global leader in online food delivery and q-commerce. The organization is deeply engineering-driven and values strong technical practices as a source of speed and quality.

The engineering teams work using eXtreme Programming principles, including test-driven development, pair programming, continuous refactoring, and trunk-based development. The company is specifically looking for leaders who can thrive in and reinforce this culture.

Role Summary

As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will guide multiple engineering teams, usually about 4 squads and roughly 20 engineers, within one technical domain. You will be responsible for shaping the domain’s technical direction, supporting team growth, enabling reliable delivery, and aligning engineering work with business goals.

Key Accountabilities

• Partner with product leadership and your teams to create a 12 to 18 month technical direction for the domain.
• Build a healthy team environment by hiring well, coaching engineers, supporting junior managers, and encouraging psychological safety.
• Lead teams through discovery, planning, and execution with small-batch delivery and frequent feedback.
• Convert product goals into technical solutions and clearly communicate the impact of the domain’s work.
• Work closely with product, design, and business stakeholders to remove ambiguity and keep everyone aligned.
• Support technical decisions around system design, architecture, and engineering practices while upholding standards for scalability, security, and performance.

Expected Outcomes

In the first 90 days, you should be fully onboarded, understand the technical roadmap and pain points of your teams, and share early feedback with your manager on domain health and near-term priorities.

By 6 months, your teams should be delivering value consistently, you should have identified and begun mentoring an emerging technical leader, you should have coached the teams through at least one cross-domain initiative, and code quality and shipping speed should be stable or improving.

By 12 months, your domain should have a well-defined technical vision communicated across the company, at least one engineer should have grown significantly toward senior IC or management paths, the teams should be shipping confidently, you should be involved in 1 to 2 strategic initiatives outside your domain, and you should be helping develop a potential future manager.

Experience and Technical Background

• At least 4 years of direct technical leadership experience managing engineering teams.
• At least 8 years of hands-on software engineering experience in production environments.
• Strong depth in at least one area such as distributed systems, backend systems, data platforms, mobile platforms, or web-scale infrastructure.
• Ability to operate across different technology stacks and make meaningful architecture decisions.
• Working knowledge of XP practices such as test-driven development, pair programming, continuous refactoring, and trunk-based development, or a strong willingness to adopt and lead them.

Leadership Qualities

• Proven success in hiring, mentoring, and developing engineers.
• Comfort working across product, design, business, and engineering functions.
• High emotional intelligence with the ability to handle uncertainty, resolve conflict constructively, and foster psychological safety.
• Experience balancing delivery speed with technical debt, simplicity, and long-term maintainability.
• Exposure to domain-level decisions such as stack migrations, architecture changes, or platform programs.

Preferred Background

• Experience leading multiple teams or a domain in a fast-growing environment.
• Prior exposure to XP practices.
• Experience in marketplaces, delivery, or logistics optimization.
• Experience coaching or developing other engineering managers.
• Familiarity with cloud environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

• You will influence a platform that serves millions of orders each day across MENA.
• The engineering culture is practical and real, with genuine focus on TDD, pair programming, and continuous delivery.
• Your teams will own their roadmap and quality, and your role is to enable rather than become a bottleneck.
• There is a clear growth path toward Director-level responsibility through broader multi-domain leadership.
• You will solve large-scale operational problems in a complex regional delivery business across 8 countries.

Additional Information

This role requires a leader who can scale technical excellence while helping teams grow and maintain a high-trust, high-accountability environment.