Senior Software Engineer - Backend

About Property Finder

Property Finder stands as the premier real estate platform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, dedicated to fostering an inclusive future for the property market while driving the regional technology ecosystem. Since its founding in 2007, it has evolved into a trusted resource for millions of property seekers and thousands of real estate professionals across multiple countries and languages, delivering seamless and informative experiences. This technology leader continually nurtures a thriving environment where talent contributes to the modernization of real estate in the MENA region.

Role Overview

We are searching for a Senior Software Engineer to join the team managing the high-traffic backend services supporting leading consumer-facing features such as search, property, and location content. This critical role requires a hands-on approach in designing, implementing, testing, deploying, and refining backend services for site features accessed by millions monthly, where performance and data accuracy directly impact organic growth and revenue.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, manage, and optimize backend services that power the platform's core consumer-facing features.
• Take full ownership of your projects through the entire lifecycle, from design to monitoring and iterative improvements based on production insights.
• Create new features and services primarily using TypeScript (Node.js) while maintaining and advancing existing services built with Go.
• Optimize system edges, such as caching strategies, CDN behavior, content delivery, and rendering, where even minor modifications significantly affect performance and cost.
• Design for multi-country and multi-language support from inception, incorporating localization and market-specific adjustments as standard practice.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product managers, SEO specialists, data engineers, and frontend/mobile developers to build maintainable and scalable solutions.
• Lead efforts in operational excellence, including monitoring, alerting, incident handling, and continuous improvement in reliability, response latency, and infrastructure expenses.
• Mentor peers, conduct thorough design and code reviews, and help establish and uphold backend development standards.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years experience in backend development focused on high-traffic, consumer-facing applications.
• Expertise in TypeScript (Node.js) as the primary language for new development work.
• Experience with Go language or strong aptitude to quickly master it, since current production services rely on it.
• Proficiency in designing and operating distributed systems, including API design, defining service boundaries, versioning, and inter-service communication, with sound judgment regarding system decomposition.
• Hands-on experience with relational databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, caching tools like Redis, and search technologies including OpenSearch or Elasticsearch; skilled in schema design, indexing, and query optimization under production load.
• Practical knowledge of AWS infrastructure, especially containerized workloads, and strong competence in observability practices such as metrics collection, structured logging, distributed tracing, setting service-level objectives (SLOs), and incident accountability.

Additional Desirable Skills

• Event-driven and asynchronous processing frameworks (e.g., Kafka, SQS).
• Expertise with edge computing concepts, CDN-level logic (e.g., Lambda@Edge, CloudFront), and multi-region deployment considerations.
• Experience developing SEO-centric or organic-traffic-dependent products, including an understanding of crawlability, page speed, and structured data's business impact.
• Working knowledge of content platforms or large-scale headless content management systems.
• Practical exposure to AI and Large Language Model (LLM) features in production environments, including managing latency and cost trade-offs.
• Background in marketplace, classifieds, or two-sided platform products.

Work Culture and Values

• Exemplify ownership by proactively identifying issues, proposing solutions, and following through until resolution.
• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders, supporting decisions with data-driven evidence.
• Maintain high standards in code quality and design reviews, fostering skill development in fellow engineers.
• Balance pragmatism with scale readiness by recognizing when simple solutions suffice and quantifying costs for both small and large-scale approaches.

Our Commitment

We nurture talent in an empowering environment that encourages creativity, growth, and meaningful contribution. Our diverse and skilled team is united by a shared dedication to innovate and enhance living experiences across the MENA region.

Guiding Principles

• Focus first on future readiness.
• Prioritize data-driven decision-making and speed over perfection.
• Optimize efforts to maximize impact.
• Embrace ownership and accountability.
• Recognize that the greatest risk is not taking any risks.