Engineering Manager - II at Tamara

About Us Tamara is the leading fintech platform in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC region with a mission to help people make their dreams come true by building the most customer-centric financial super-app on earth. The company serves millions of users in the region and partners with leading global and regional brands such as SHEIN, Jarir, noon, IKEA and Amazon, as well as small and medium businesses. Tamara is Saudi Arabia’s first fintech unicorn and is backed by Sanabil Investments, a wholly owned company by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), SNB Capital, Checkout.com, amongst others. The company operates from its headquarters in Riyadh, with additional regional and global support offices. Your Role We're seeking an Engineering Manager II to lead a critical area of our engineering organization. In this role, you will be accountable for the delivery and technical strategy across multiple complex and related domains within our product. You will lead a high-performing team of 6-10 senior engineers, potentially structured across two squads, driving the execution of team-level goals that are directly aligned with broader organizational priorities. Drawing on your deep expertise in software development and proven leadership, you will guide the architectural evolution of your team's systems, ensuring they are reliable, scalable, and performant. You will be a key partner to product and business leadership, influencing medium- and long-term strategy and ensuring your teams are focused on delivering measurable impact. Your ultimate responsibility is to orchestrate technical excellence, foster the growth of senior engineers and future leaders, manage complex cross-team dependencies, and transform how millions of users engage in shopping, payment, and banking activities. You are a driven, determined, and curious leader, who knows that collective strength means we all win. With a positive outlook, you are solution-oriented–persevering regardless of circumstances, always finding a way through, no matter the challenges. You will effectively find a way to work with everyone through empathy and respect. You will be driven and comfortable with responding quickly with urgency, with the ability to change course without losing momentum and energy, resulting in great success. Your 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, advocating 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, mentor those aspiring to become Engineering Manager I's, and support the success of new managers. Drive team structure decisions, hiring plans, and succession planning while effectively managing performance across all levels. • Technical Excellence: Lead architectural discussions for your team's systems. 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 your area. Proactively identify and resolve complex cross-team delivery challenges, making 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 your teams are focusing on measurable outcomes and ROI, and 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. Your Expertise • You have 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 (e.g., 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 a strong plus.