Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East — making it easy to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Our purpose is simple: to simplify and improve people’s lives and build an awesome organisation that inspires.
Since 2012, Careem has enabled earnings for over 2.5 million Captains, simplified the lives of more than 70 million customers, and built a platform where the region’s best talent and entrepreneurs thrive. We operate in 70+ cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan.
We’re now entering our next chapter — one powered by AI. We’re looking for AI talent: curious problem-solvers who know how to apply AI to build tools, automate workflows, and create real impact. Whether it’s streamlining operations, enhancing customer experience, or reimagining internal systems — we want people who can make Careem work smarter and move faster.
About the Role
Careem's Quick and Shops team owns the customer-facing backend experience for two of our fastest-growing verticals. We power everything a customer sees and interacts with inside the consumer app — from browsing to checkout — through a server-driven UI architecture that keeps our mobile and backend teams tightly aligned.
As a Senior Software Engineer I, you will take full ownership of backend domains, build reliable and scalable services, and collaborate closely with mobile engineers to deliver a seamless customer experience for millions of Careem users.
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services powering the Quick and Shops customer experience.
- Write high-quality Golang code, delivering complete features and resolving bugs independently.
- Build and maintain REST APIs, service-to-service integrations, and gateway and configuration-driven systems.
- Own and evolve backend data models and catalog systems supporting our product verticals.
- Manage event-driven systems using Kafka and Avro schema evolution.
- Support AWS cloud infrastructure including S3, CloudFront, DNS, and certificate management.
- Participate in on-call rotations and debug production issues across highly distributed and decoupled systems.
- Mentor junior colleagues and drive cross-functional technical discussions across teams.
- Champion AI-assisted development tools as part of your daily engineering workflow.
What You'll Need
- Proven backend engineering experience at a mid-band level or above — this is not an entry-level role.
- Strong hands-on experience with Golang; candidates with deep experience in another modern language (Java, Kotlin, C#, C++) will be considered if they can demonstrate a clear ability to ramp up.
- Product-facing backend experience — you have built systems that directly serve end customers, not purely infrastructure or platform-isolated work.
- Experience with REST APIs, service-to-service integrations, and distributed systems.
- Familiarity with data modeling, Kafka, and Avro schema evolution.
- AWS cloud infrastructure exposure — S3, CloudFront, DNS, certificate management.
- On-call ownership and a track record of debugging complex issues across distributed systems independently.
- Strong communication skills, a collaborative mindset, and the ability to work autonomously without close supervision.
- Experience mentoring junior engineers and coordinating across cross-functional teams.
Nice to Have
- Understanding of server-driven UI paradigms.
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
- Working knowledge of relational and non-relational databases.
- Familiarity with software engineering best practices: code reviews, source control, testing standards.
What we’ll provide you
We offer colleagues the opportunity to drive impact in the region while they learn and grow. As a full time Careem colleague, you will be able to:
- Work and learn from great minds by joining a community of inspiring colleagues.
- Put your passion to work in a purposeful organisation dedicated to creating impact in a region with a lot of untapped potential.
- Explore new opportunities to learn and grow every day.
- Work 4 days a week in office & 1 day from home, and remotely from any country in the world for 30 days a year with unlimited vacation days per year. (If you are in an individual contributor role in tech, you will have 2 office days a week and 3 to work from home.)
- Access to healthcare benefits and fitness reimbursements for health activities including gym, health club, and training classes.
Skills Required
- Backend engineering experience at a mid-band level or above; this is not an entry-level role.
- Strong hands-on experience with Golang, or deep experience in Java, Kotlin, C#, or C# with ability to ramp up.
- Product-facing backend engineering experience serving end customers.
- Experience with REST APIs, service-to-service integrations, and distributed systems.
- Familiarity with data modeling, Kafka, and Avro schema evolution.
- Exposure to AWS cloud infrastructure, including S3, CloudFront, DNS, and certificate management.
- On-call ownership and independent debugging of complex distributed-system issues.
- Strong communication, collaboration, autonomy, and ability to work without close supervision.
- Experience mentoring junior engineers and coordinating across cross-functional teams.
- Understanding of server-driven UI paradigms.
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
- Working knowledge of relational and non-relational databases.
- Familiarity with code reviews, source control, and testing standards.
What We Do
Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East, making it easier than ever to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Careem is led by a powerful purpose to simplify and improve the lives of people and build an awesome organisation that inspires. Since 2012, Careem has created earnings for over 2.5 million ride-hailing and delivery Captains, simplified the lives of over 50 million customers, and built a platform for the region’s best talent to thrive and for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. Careem operates in over 70 cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan. In 2019, Careem was acquired by Uber Technologies, Inc. In April 2023 we welcomed the global technology investor e& (formerly Etisalat) as a partner, following their investment in the Careem Everything App.
