Senior Backend Platform Engineer – AI Platform | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Summary
Builds and scales backend infrastructure for an AI platform using Azure, Kubernetes, and event-driven systems to support AI-driven products and data-intensive workloads.
Location
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (On-site)
Job Category
- Information Technology (IT) & Software
Job Overview
An exciting opportunity is available for a Senior Backend Platform Engineer to join an AI Platform team in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This position is ideal for experienced software engineers who are passionate about designing large-scale backend platforms, distributed systems, and cloud-native infrastructure that power AI-driven products and data-intensive applications.
The successful candidate will play a critical role in developing scalable backend services, improving platform reliability, and enabling engineering teams through reusable platform components and modern cloud technologies. This role offers excellent career growth, exposure to enterprise AI infrastructure, and opportunities for continuous professional development in cloud computing, distributed systems, and platform engineering.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend platform services for AI and data-intensive workloads.
- Build and operate cloud-native infrastructure using Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes.
- Design and maintain event-driven architectures and distributed systems.
- Improve platform reliability, observability, security, and operational excellence.
- Develop reusable platform abstractions and developer tooling.
- Implement best practices for system design, resilience, scalability, and performance.
- Develop and maintain REST APIs and service-to-service communication.
- Manage Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or Bicep.
- Support CI/CD pipelines and DevOps automation.
- Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams throughout the software development lifecycle.
Requirements & Qualifications
- Proven experience in Backend Platform Engineering.
- Strong expertise in distributed systems design.
- Experience designing event-driven architectures.
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and Microsoft Azure.
- Strong understanding of microservices architecture.
- Experience with messaging platforms such as Kafka, Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, or equivalent.
- Strong knowledge of REST APIs and service communication patterns.
- Experience with PostgreSQL and large-scale data-intensive applications.
- Knowledge of Redis and caching strategies.
- Experience with Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.
- Hands-on experience using Terraform or Bicep for Infrastructure as Code.
- Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building internal developer platforms and engineering tools.
- Experience with Istio or Linkerd service mesh technologies.
- Strong knowledge of CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga Patterns, and Outbox Pattern.
- Experience supporting AI infrastructure, Retrieval Pipelines, Vector or Embedding Stores, and Model Serving Platforms.
- Experience working in regulated environments with compliance, governance, audit, and data sovereignty requirements.
- Knowledge of Secrets Management, Identity Federation, Zero-Trust Security Models, and Network Security.
Technical Expertise
Candidates should demonstrate advanced expertise in at least three of the following:
- Event-Driven Architecture
- Distributed Systems Design
- Backend Architecture & Microservices
- Cloud Infrastructure (Microsoft Azure)
- PostgreSQL at Scale
- Observability & Reliability Engineering
- Platform Security
Salary, Benefits & Career Growth
Benefits
- Opportunity to work on enterprise AI platform initiatives.
- Exposure to modern cloud-native and distributed technologies.
- Collaborative engineering environment.
- Work on large-scale AI infrastructure and backend platform development.
Career Growth
This role provides outstanding opportunities to progress into Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Platform Architect, Cloud Architect, or Engineering Leadership positions while working on advanced AI and cloud infrastructure projects.
Training & Professional Development
Engineers will enhance their expertise in distributed systems, Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure, cloud-native architecture, AI infrastructure, DevOps, platform security, and modern backend engineering through challenging enterprise-scale projects.