Data Engineering Manager II

Role Overview

Data Engineering Manager II at Tamara, a leading fintech platform in Saudi Arabia and the GCC region, based on location to be confirmed.

Company Overview

Tamara is a fintech platform with a mission to help people own their dreams built on being simple, trusted, and everywhere customers need them. More than 25 million customers and over 130,000 partner merchants depend on Tamara every day for reliable financial solutions across retail, travel, education, healthcare, and beyond. Tamara is backed by Sanabil Investments, a wholly owned company of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and SNB Capital, among others.

Role Purpose

Lead a critical area of the engineering organization by managing a high-performing team of 6–10 senior engineers, potentially structured across two squads. Drive technical strategy and execution across multiple complex and related domains within the product, while orchestrating technical excellence, fostering the growth of senior engineers and future leaders, and managing complex cross-team dependencies to transform how millions of users engage in shopping, payment, and banking activities.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Inspire and guide a group of senior engineers, setting a clear direction that aligns with the company vision.
• Drive alignment between technology goals and product priorities.
• Advocate for long-term technical quality alongside short-term delivery.

People Leadership & Development

• Develop both direct reports and skip-levels for future leadership roles.
• Create growth opportunities for senior engineers and mentor those aspiring to become Engineering Manager I.
• Support the success of new managers.
• Drive team structure decisions, hiring plans, and succession planning.
• Effectively manage performance across all levels.

Technical Excellence

• Lead architectural discussions for the team's systems.
• Guide the architectural evolution of the team's systems, ensuring they are reliable, scalable, and performant.
• Drive continuous improvements to system reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Monitor technical health and ensure the team maintains a healthy balance between new feature delivery and technical investment.

Execution & Delivery

• Define and own the delivery plans for initiatives that span multiple teams.
• Own resource allocation and hiring strategy for the area.
• Proactively identify and resolve complex cross-team delivery challenges.
• Make strategic trade-offs between short- and long-term value.
• Provide clear visibility to leadership on project status, risks, and mitigation strategies.

Product & Business Partnership

• Partner directly with Product and business leadership to influence medium- and long-term product strategies.
• Ensure teams are focusing on measurable outcomes and ROI.
• Encourage a culture of thoughtful experimentation aligned with strategic goals.

Team Health & Collaboration

• Build a healthy, inclusive environment of trust, ownership, and accountability.
• Foster a strong collaboration and knowledge-sharing culture.
• Work closely with peer Engineering Managers and the architecture board to ensure alignment and drive standards across the engineering organization.

Qualifications & Experience

• At least 4+ years of experience managing one or more engineering teams.
• 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.
• Proven ability to develop engineering talent, including mentoring senior engineers and aspiring managers.
• Fintech or eCommerce experience is a strong plus.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong technical background in modern software development, including Java/Go, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Messaging Queues, and Cloud Services.
• Experience leading architectural discussions and driving technical strategy.
• Experience partnering with product managers to influence product roadmaps and align technical strategy with business objectives.
• Expertise in Agile methodologies.
• Ability to resolve complex, cross-team delivery challenges in a fast-paced environment.
• Solution-oriented with the ability to persevere through challenges and find a way forward.
• Comfortable responding quickly with urgency and ability to change course without losing momentum and energy.
• Ability to work effectively with everyone through empathy and respect.