Senior Data Engineering Manager

About Tamara

Tamara is a prominent fintech platform operating in Saudi Arabia and the GCC region. The company focuses on providing simple, trusted, and accessible financial solutions. With a customer base exceeding 25 million and a network of 130,000 partner merchants, Tamara delivers financial services across various sectors. The company is supported by Sanabil Investments, a wholly owned entity of the Public Investment Fund, and SNB Capital.

The Role: Senior Data Engineering Manager

Tamara is seeking a Senior Data Engineering Manager to lead a critical area within its engineering organization in Riyadh. This full-time role involves accountability for delivery and technical strategy across multiple complex product domains. The manager will lead a high-performing team of 6-10 senior engineers, potentially structured across two squads, and will drive team-level goals aligned with broader organizational priorities. The position requires leveraging deep expertise in software development and proven leadership to guide the architectural evolution of systems, ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance. The Senior Data Engineering Manager will partner with product and business leadership to influence medium- and long-term strategy and ensure teams deliver measurable impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Inspire and guide senior engineers, setting a clear direction aligned with the company vision.
• Drive alignment between technology goals and product priorities, advocating for long-term technical quality alongside short-term delivery.
• Develop direct reports and skip-levels for future leadership roles, creating growth opportunities for senior engineers and mentoring aspiring managers.
• Lead architectural discussions for the team's systems and drive continuous improvements to system reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Define and own delivery plans for initiatives spanning multiple teams, managing resource allocation and hiring strategy for the area.
• Proactively identify and resolve complex cross-team delivery challenges, making strategic trade-offs between short- and long-term value.
• Partner directly with Product and business leadership to influence medium- and long-term product strategies, ensuring teams focus on measurable outcomes and ROI.
• Build a healthy, inclusive environment of trust, ownership, and accountability, fostering strong collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• At least 4+ years of experience managing one or more engineering teams, with a proven track record of managing senior individual contributors and leading projects of medium-to-high complexity.
• Demonstrated experience owning delivery for initiatives spanning multiple teams or complex product domains.
• Strong technical background in modern software development (*, Java/Go, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Messaging Queues, Cloud Services), with experience leading architectural discussions and driving technical strategy.
• Experience partnering with product managers to influence product roadmaps and align technical strategy with business objectives.
• Proven ability to develop engineering talent, including mentoring senior engineers and aspiring managers.
• Expertise in Agile methodologies and experience resolving complex, cross-team delivery challenges in a fast-paced environment.
• Fintech or eCommerce experience is considered a strong advantage.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a driven, determined, and curious leader with a positive, solution-oriented outlook. They should be able to persevere through challenges, work effectively with others through empathy and respect, and respond quickly with urgency, adapting course without losing momentum. The role requires 4+ years of relevant experience.