Software Engineering Team Lead

About Zid and Role Overview

Zid is developing commerce platforms that empower merchants and provide seamless user experiences for customers. The role of Software Engineering Team Lead involves managing Zid’s Storefront Engineering team, responsible for customer-facing commerce features such as checkout, authentication, themes, and other storefront components. This position requires leading and mentoring engineers while actively contributing to designing and delivering secure, scalable, and reliable software.

Key Responsibilities

• Oversee daily delivery activities of the Storefront Engineering team, including priority setting, task breakdown, dependency management, and removing obstacles.
• Own technical strategy and uphold quality standards for systems related to checkout, authentication, and storefront themes.
• Balance new development efforts with system reliability, scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Design and evaluate complex solutions for user flows, APIs, data management, and system integrations.
• Maintain clear documentation of technical decisions and guide engineering implementation.
• Write and review production-level code while engaging hands-on with challenging technical problems.
• Support debugging efforts and enforce best practices in testing, code review, security, and observability.
• Collaborate closely with Product and Design teams to clarify requirements and identify early technical limits.
• Ensure the delivery of accessible, responsive, and dependable front-end experiences across devices.
• Coordinate with other engineering teams to manage shared services, dependencies, and releases for end-to-end storefront functionality.
• Drive improvements in system performance, uptime, resilience, and scalability.
• Lead incident investigations, pinpoint root causes of issues, and implement follow-up fixes.
• Mentor engineers through feedback, pairing sessions, delegation, and technical guidance to foster their growth.
• Encourage engineers to enhance their technical judgment, ownership, and problem-solving skills.
• Plan projects realistically with clear milestones and manageable timelines.
• Communicate progress, dependencies, risks, and trade-offs transparently between teams.
• Make informed decisions balancing technical quality and delivery deadlines when priorities shift.
• Leverage automation and AI-assisted development tools responsibly while maintaining accountability for software quality and security.

Qualifications & Experience

• At least 3 years of professional software engineering experience including leadership or mentoring roles.
• Practical expertise developing and operating modern web applications and backend services in production environments.
• Experienced in API design, service integrations, databases, and working with distributed systems.
• Comprehensive knowledge of software architecture, code review procedures, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and release methodologies.
• Skills in diagnosing production issues using logs, metrics, traces, and customer feedback.
• Ability to identify root causes of outages or bugs and lead corrective improvements.
• Understanding of web security principles, authentication, authorization, and proper handling of sensitive data.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional projects and communicate technical trade-offs effectively.
• Experienced in mentoring engineers through constructive feedback and coaching.
• Strong ownership mentality regarding technical quality, delivery, and reliability of software products.
• Fluency in English communication, both written and verbal.

Preferred Skills

• Background in e-commerce systems such as checkout, payment processing, or high-traffic user journeys.
• Experience with theme engines, templating, UI customization, or merchant-facing storefront tools.
• Knowledge of performance optimization, accessibility standards, and responsive design practices.
• Experience developing Arabic-language products and supporting right-to-left (RTL) interfaces.
• Familiarity with AI-powered coding tools integrated into production engineering workflows.
• Experience working with scalable or distributed system architectures.

Technical and Soft Skills

• Full-stack development expertise including front-end interfaces, backend APIs, integrations, and production support.
• Strong system design capabilities for complex APIs, data flows, and interrelated customer journeys.
• Architectural decision-making with focus on scalability, maintainability, and security.
• Proficiency with automated testing, code quality assurance, and release validation.
• Expertise in reliability engineering, including monitoring, incident response, and root cause analysis.
• Understanding of security best practices, authentication, authorization, and sensitive data protection.
• Experience with CI/CD practices and production deployment readiness.
• Skills in boosting application performance, availability, fault tolerance, and scalability.
• Using AI-assisted engineering tools while upholding accountability for code correctness and security.

Why Join Zid?

• Opportunity to build impactful commerce experiences supporting thousands of merchants and customers.
• Leadership role influencing critical storefront features like checkout and authentication.
• Chance to mentor and grow engineers while tackling significant technical challenges.
• Collaborative environment involving product, design, QA, and engineering teams.
• Ownership over technical direction and delivery at scale.
• Contribute to shaping the future of retail technology in Saudi Arabia and beyond.