Senior Development Lead

About CodeNinja

CodeNinja is an AI and engineering delivery company based in Riyadh, serving Saudi enterprises, software acquirers, and government entities. The company focuses on modernizing systems and operationalizing intelligence across critical workflows, building AI-native infrastructure, embedded engineering capability, and owned application platforms. CodeNinja supports over 240 organizations in sectors such as government digitization, energy, financial services, logistics, and healthcare, aligning with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 objectives for digital sovereignty and local talent development.

Role Overview

CodeNinja is seeking a Senior Development Lead for a full-time position in Riyadh. This role requires over 10 years of experience and involves both technical leadership and hands-on development. The Senior Development Lead will guide a development team while remaining actively involved in architecture, Low-Level Design (LLD), coding, code reviews, troubleshooting, and overall technical delivery. The ideal candidate will combine strong technical expertise with team leadership to deliver scalable, secure, and high-quality applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Low-Level Design: Lead technical design and development, translate architecture into detailed LLD, review designs for scalability and performance, and drive adoption of engineering best practices.
• Java, Spring Boot & Microservices: Design and develop scalable Java/Spring Boot microservices and RESTful APIs, define microservice architecture, apply best practices across Spring Boot, and perform hands-on coding for critical features.
• API Design & Security: Design secure, scalable APIs, define contracts, apply knowledge of OAuth , OpenID Connect, JWT, and ensure compliance with enterprise security standards.
• React JS / Front-End Development: Provide technical leadership for React JS front-end development, including scalable UI components and architecture, integrate with backend APIs, and contribute hands-on to React development.
• Hands-on Development: Actively contribute to coding for critical, complex, or high-priority features, conduct detailed code reviews, and perform technical troubleshooting and performance analysis.
• Development Team Leadership: Lead and mentor developers, break down requirements into technical tasks, support accurate estimates, track progress, and run technical discussions and code reviews.
• Quality, Performance & Production Readiness: Ensure deliverables meet quality, security, and performance standards, support production deployments and hotfixes, and investigate and resolve production issues.
• Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with Solution Architects, Business Analysts, QA, DevOps, and other teams, participate in governance forums, and communicate technical risks and recommendations.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader with strong experience in Low-Level Design (LLD), Java Spring Boot, Microservices, API development and security, and React JS. This role requires someone who can understand requirements, design solutions, create LLDs, define APIs and security controls, code critical components, review team code, resolve technical issues, mentor developers, and drive the team to production. This is not a purely managerial or project coordination role.

Required Experience

• Over 10 years of experience in development leadership roles.
• Demonstrated expertise in Low-Level Design (LLD).
• Extensive experience with Java Spring Boot and Microservices architecture.
• Proficiency in API development and security best practices.
• Strong background in React JS for front-end development.

Work Environment

This full-time position is based in Riyadh. The role offers the opportunity to work on enterprise-grade AI-native and API-driven systems for clients across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region. CodeNinja fosters a collaborative, growth-focused engineering culture with exposure to modern tooling and architecture.