Senior Data Engineer

About Alaan

Alaan is the Middle East’s first AI-powered spend management platform, built to help businesses save time and money.
Our all-in-one solution combines smart corporate cards, real-time expense tracking, AI-powered automation, seamless accounting integrations, and deep financial insights- designed to simplify finance operations and maximize control over company spend.

Founded in 2022, Alaan is already the trusted partner of over 2000 leading businesses across the UAE and KSA, including G42, Careem, McDonald’s, Tabby, Al Barari, Rove Hotels, Rivoli, and CarSwitch. Together, our customers have saved over AED 100 million with Alaan.

In just three years, Alaan has become the #1 expense management platform in the Middle East- and we’ve done it while becoming profitable.

Backed by Y Combinator and top global investors- including founders and executives of leading startups- Alaan is built by a world-class team from McKinsey, BCG, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Zomato, Careem, Rippling, and other high-growth companies.

We’re not just building software. We’re reimagining how finance works for modern businesses across the region.

About the Role:

As a Senior Data Engineer, you’ll be a core contributor to our data foundation — designing and building critical pipelines, managing our data platforms, and directly enabling our AI-workflows and data-driven decision-making.This role is perfect for someone who has hands-on experience building scalable data systems and who’s ready to take ownership of an end-to-end data setup in a high-growth startup where data is at the heart of everything we do.

What You’ll Do:

• Design, build, and maintain robust and scalable ETL/ELT data pipelines from various internal and external data sources.
• Set up and manage core data infrastructure (databases, data lake, and data warehouse) on AWS or GCP, ensuring performance and reliability.
• Implement and optimize real-time and batch data processing using modern orchestration tools (Airflow, Airbyte, N8N, serverless frameworks, etc.).
• Implement Change Data Capture (CDC) for key databases like PostgreSQL and MongoDB to enable real-time analytics.
• Work with OLAP databases to optimize queries and support large-scale data analytics.
• Contribute to the architecture and setup of streaming data pipelines with Kafka or equivalent technologies.
• Collaborate with the AI teams to build and productionize data pipelines for machine learning models and AI-automation workflows.
• Manage and improve our BI tools (e.g., Metabase) to empower self-service analytics across the organization.
• Implement and enforce data governance, security, and data quality standards.

Must-Have Skills:

• 3–5 years of professional experience in data engineering.
• Strong, hands-on experience with Python for data processing and automation, advanced SQL, and shell scripting.
• Experience working with PostgreSQL , MongoDB(or anything equivalent) and at least one modern data warehouse solution (e.g., ClickHouse, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift).
• Demonstrable experience building, deploying, and maintaining production ETL/ELT pipelines using Airflow or similar orchestration tools.
• Solid understanding of major cloud platform (AWS or GCP) and its core data services (e.g., S3, RDS, IAM, Lambda).
• A good understanding of data architecture patterns, including data lakes, streaming data (Kafka), and real-time systems.
• Experience supporting AI/ML data workflows (e.g., feature stores, vector databases) and familiarity with MLOps tools (MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker, etc.).
• Excellent problem-solving skills and a proactive mindset focused on building automated, scalable, and maintainable systems.

Good-to-Have Skills:

• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, Helm).
• Hands-on experience with containerisation (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS etc).
• Experience with advanced data modelling techniques.
• Observability including AI observability platforms like Langsmith etc.
• Previous experience working in a fast-paced fintech or startup environment.

What's in it for you

• Contribute to building the Middle East’s most beloved fintech brand from the ground up
• Build a modern data platform from the ground up, influencing architecture and best practices.
• Work with a passionate, tech-first team that values innovation, ownership and impact.
• Thrive in a flexible hybrid culture with ample work-life balance
• Participate in exciting offsite events
• Competitive salary and equity
• Enjoy additional perks like travel allowances, gym memberships, and more