Tech Lead -Payments

About Alaan

Alaan is the SuperCard® for businesses and the most loved fintech in the Middle East. Our mission is to simplify finance for businesses so they can save time and money.

Alaan provides everything businesses need to manage and control expenses, including the SuperCard®, AI-powered automation and insights, streamlined accounting, and centralized dashboards, all in one place. Over 2000 businesses in the UAE and KSA, from startups to enterprises, use Alaan to control spending and save costs.

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

We are looking for a Backend Tech Lead (Payments) with deep experience in Node.js to design, build, and scale high-throughput payment systems. In this role, you will own backend services that handle critical payment workflows across the entire payments lifecycle—from authorization and processing to settlement, reconciliation, and failure handling. The ideal candidate has deep expertise in Node.js, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), APIs, and event-driven architectures, along with experience in both SQL and NoSQL databases.

You will also be responsible for monitoring, logging, and observability, ensuring seamless performance using tools like New Relic, Datadog, and other observability stacks.

What you'll do

• Technical Leadership: Lead and mentor a team of engineers in designing, developing, and maintaining scalable backend systems.
• Built real-world payment systems in Node.js, understands gateway integrations, asynchronous processing, idempotency, retries, and observability, and can design systems that perform reliably at scale in a regulated environment
• API Development: Design and implement RESTful, ensuring best practices in API security and efficiency
• Cloud Infrastructure: Manage and optimize deployments on AWS & GCP, including infrastructure as code (IaC) using Terraform/CDK.
• Event-Driven Architecture: Implement event-driven microservices using Pub/Sub, Kafka, SNS/SQS, or EventBridge.
• Database Management: Work with SQL (PostgreSQL/RDS) and NoSQL (MongoDB or Elasticsearch) databases, ensuring performance and scalability.
• Scalability & Performance: Design and implement strategies for high availability, auto-scaling, and load balancing in cloud environments.
• Security & Compliance: Enforce security best practices, manage IAM roles, and ensure compliance with industry standards.
• Automation & CI/CD: Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for seamless deployment and integration
• Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and DevOps teams to drive efficient development and deployment processes.

What we're looking for

Must-have skills:

• At least 5+ years of relevant experience in technical development
• Strong proficiency in Node.js with frameworks like NestJS, Express.js
• Experience with AWS & GCP services (EC2, S3, Lambda, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, IAM, VPC, etc.)
• Expertise in API development & integration (REST, GraphQL, WebSockets)
• Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures (SNS/SQS or Pub/Sub)
• Strong knowledge of SQL databases (PostgreSQL, RDS) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Elasticsearch)
• Experience in scaling microservices & optimizing system performance

Good-to-have skills:

• Experience in serverless architecture (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (cloudFormation,Terraform, CDK, C)
• Knowledge of message queues (AWS SQS, GCP Pub/Sub, Kafka)
• Exposure to distributed tracing (Jaeger, OpenTelemetry)
• Hands-on experience with feature flagging & experimentation (LaunchDarkly)

What's in it for you

• Contribute to building the Middle East’s most beloved fintech brand from the ground up
• Benefit from a role with significant ownership and accountability
• 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