Ziina is looking for a Backend Engineer to join our team. We laid a strong foundation upon which we’ve shipped our product. We are looking for someone to help us build out innovative new features, prepare our technology to scale, and help shape our engineering organization to be the kind of place that bright minds from across the region and the world aspire to work for.

As our team is small, our ideal candidate is a creative thinker excited to solve hard problems and to build something from the ground up. They can move quickly, clearly articulate tradeoffs, and have the judgement to own features independently. They are obsessive about delivering great, high quality products to our users. We are ambitious and excited to build big things, and we’d love to bring on someone who is as well. In short, we are looking for owners.

As a Backend Engineer at Ziina you will:

• Collaborate with world-class product, design, operations, and engineering teams to determine which features and solutions will deliver the most value for the business and the best experience for our users
• Own and ship end-to-end reliable, scalable, and maintainable software that will keep our users’ funds safe and stand the test of time. You will take features from design, to implementation, to polish, to shipping, to monitoring and measuring progress
• Design and build a cloud-native platform while leveraging the main features for monitoring, observability, security, scalability, elasticity, and testing
• Improve CI/CD workflows to reduce time-to-market for new features
• Help shape our engineering culture by introducing good practices and methods of knowledge-sharing

Key skills and characteristics

• Be an owner and a team player
• Be curious and eager to grow
• Be able to define and effectively communicate technical and design requirements
• Be able to write clean, high-quality, testable, reusable, and well-documented code
• Possess strong data-driven thinking and customer focus
• Possess excellent communication skills and a desire to collaborate
• Live in, or be willing to relocate to the UAE

What would amaze us

• 3+ years developing software
• Experience working on systems that handle money
• Experience with Node.js, GraphQL, Postgres, ElasticSearch, or Kafka
• Experience shipping and maintaining complex backends

Our tech stack

We’ve built a modular architecture with the principles of reliability, scalability, and maintainability in mind. Our current stack is:

• Typescript, Node.js and Nest.js for our main application’s backend
• Swift/SwiftUI for our iOS app, Kotlin for our Android app
• Next.js, React and Typescript for our web applications
• GraphQL Federation for our client-facing APIs and Kafka for our inter-service communication
• PostgresSQL for consistent and durable storage, Redis for quick fetching, Elasticsearch for quick searching
• AWS for hosting our cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes for orchestrating our workloads
• Terraform for IaC
• Github Actions for CI/CD

Summary: Join a leading non-custodial wallet provider committed to bringing the next billion users into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). We are seeking a talented mobile application developer to build high-security mobile applications and implement advanced biometric authentication and secure key storage solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain high-security mobile applications using React Native, Swift, or Kotlin.
• Implement and enhance biometric authentication features to ensure user security.
• Design and manage secure key storage systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define, design, and deliver new features.
• Troubleshoot and debug to improve application performance.
• Stay updated with emerging technologies and propose enhancements to improve user experience.

Required Skills:

• 3+ years of experience in mobile application development using React Native, Swift, or Kotlin.
• Strong understanding of mobile security principles and best practices.
• Experience with implementing biometric authentication.
• Knowledge of secure key storage methodologies.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Strong communication and teamwork abilities.

Ziina is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our team. We laid a strong foundation upon which we’ve shipped our product. We are looking for someone to help us build out innovative new features, prepare our technology to scale, and help shape our engineering organization to be the kind of place that bright minds from across the region and the world aspire to work for.

As our team is small, our ideal candidate is a creative thinker excited to solve hard problems and to build something from the ground up. They can move quickly, clearly articulate tradeoffs, and have the judgement to own features independently. They are obsessive about delivering great, high quality products to our users. We are ambitious and excited to build big things, and we’d love to bring on someone who is as well. In short, we are looking for owners.

As a Senior Backend Engineer at Ziina you will:

• Collaborate with world-class product, design, operations, and engineering teams to determine which features and solutions will deliver the most value for the business and the best experience for our users
• Own and ship end-to-end reliable, scalable, and maintainable software that will keep our users’ funds safe and stand the test of time. You will take features from design, to implementation, to polish, to shipping, to monitoring and measuring progress
• Foster a high-performance culture by mentoring engineers, promoting best practices, and creating an environment where engineers can thrive and grow
• Design and build a cloud-native platform while leveraging the main features for monitoring, observability, security, scalability, elasticity, and testing
• Improve CI/CD workflows to reduce time-to-market for new features
• Help shape our engineering culture by introducing good practices and methods of knowledge-sharing

Key skills and characteristics

• Be an owner and a team player
• Be curious and eager to grow
• Be able to define and effectively communicate technical and design requirements
• Be able to write clean, high-quality, testable, reusable, and well-documented code
• Possess strong data-driven thinking and customer focus
• Possess excellent communication skills and a desire to collaborate
• Live in, or be willing to relocate to the UAE

What would amaze us

• 6+ years developing software
• Experience working on systems that handle money
• Experience with Node.js, GraphQL, Postgres, ElasticSearch, or Kafka
• Experience shipping and maintaining complex backends

Our tech stack

We’ve built a modular architecture with the principles of reliability, scalability, and maintainability in mind. Our current stack is:

• Typescript, Node.js and Nest.js for our main application’s backend
• Swift/SwiftUI for our iOS app, Kotlin for our Android app
• Next.js, React and Typescript for our web applications
• GraphQL Federation for our client-facing APIs and Kafka for our inter-service communication
• PostgresSQL for consistent and durable storage, Redis for quick fetching, Elasticsearch for quick searching
• AWS for hosting our cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes for orchestrating our workloads
• Terraform for IaC
• Github Actions for CI/CD

We are partnering with a venture-backed, early-stage technology company building a programmable loyalty and rewards operating system for global consumer brands. The platform enables brands to launch white-label fan engagement and monetisation experiences—including predictions, quests, digital drops, auctions, and ticketing—without gambling mechanics.

At its core, the platform combines consumer-grade applications with a tokenised exchange and settlement layer, enabling branded tokens to be issued, traded, and distributed at scale. Initial verticals are in global sports and entertainment, with expansion planned into additional IP-driven markets.

The company is now seeking a Founding CTO to lead the architecture and build-out of its protocol, exchange infrastructure, and engineering organisation from day one.

As Founding CTO, you will be responsible for designing, building, and scaling the full technical stack, with a particular focus on the exchange and protocol layer. You will oversee smart contract development, liquidity and market mechanics, wallet infrastructure, and the integration between on-chain systems and high-scale consumer products.

This is a hands-on leadership role suited to a senior Web3 technologist who has shipped production protocols and wants full ownership of technical strategy in a greenfield environment.

Responsibilities

• Exchange & protocol architecture
• Design and deploy a hybrid AMM / orderbook-based exchange for branded tokens
• Build liquidity pools, routing logic, and market-making infrastructure
• Define token economics, liquidity incentives, and trading mechanics
• Smart contracts
• Develop, test, and deploy core protocol contracts, including:
• Token standards
• Liquidity pools and staking
• Rewards distribution and governance
• Lead audit processes and ensure a strong on-chain security posture
• Wallet & settlement infrastructure
• Implement abstracted wallet solutions (e.g. smart accounts, MPC)
• Integrate fiat on/off-ramps and external custody providers where required
• Platform integration
• Oversee architecture connecting the protocol layer to:
• Engagement mechanics (predictions, quests, missions)
• Rewards and commerce systems (drops, auctions, ticketing, merchandise)
• Analytics and reporting dashboards
• Consumer products
• Guide development of mobile (iOS/Android) and web applications delivered under partner branding
• Leadership & strategy
• Hire, lead, and scale the engineering team across protocol, backend, and product
• Set engineering standards, development workflows, and technical roadmap
• Make strategic build-vs-buy decisions and select vendors and tooling

Qualifications

• 5+ years building blockchain or crypto infrastructure
• Proven experience shipping at least one protocol or exchange to mainnet
• Deep understanding of DeFi mechanics (AMMs, liquidity mining, tokenomics)
• Strong production smart contract experience with a clean audit track record
• Experience working with L2s, rollups, or app-chains
• Familiarity with consumer-facing systems and real-time platforms
• Comfortable operating in early-stage, resource-constrained environments
• Able to balance protocol purity with product and user experience needs
• Strong communicator across technical and non-technical stakeholders

Technical environment

• Smart contracts: Solidity (advanced), Foundry / Hardhat, formal verification fundamentals
• Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust or Go, Python
• Infrastructure: RPC operations, indexers/subgraphs, GCP, Docker/Kubernetes
• Security: Audit coordination, attack vector mitigation (reentrancy, flash loans, oracle risk), monitoring and incident response
• Product stack exposure: React Native or Flutter, PostgreSQL, Redis, event streaming (useful for protocol-to-product integration)

We are supporting a venture-backed, early-stage technology company building a white-label consumer engagement and rewards platform for global brands. The platform enables large-scale fan and customer experiences (e.g. predictions, quests, digital rewards, ticketing and commerce) while incorporating tokenised settlement and rewards infrastructure.

This role represents a true greenfield build. The Founding CTO will define the overall system architecture, technical standards, and engineering culture from day one, while delivering a production-grade platform designed to scale to millions of users.

As Founding CTO, you will take end-to-end ownership of the technology organisation, from initial architecture and hands-on development through to team build-out and long-term technical strategy.

You will work closely with founders and commercial stakeholders, translating product vision into scalable systems and ensuring the platform can support multiple partners, brands, and regions.

Responsibilities

• Platform & architecture
• Define and build the core platform architecture supporting engagement mechanics, rewards, commerce, and analytics
• Establish system design principles covering scalability, security, and performance
• Make key build-vs-buy decisions and select vendors, tooling, and infrastructure partners
• Backend & infrastructure
• Architect and implement backend services supporting real-time event ingestion, points/wallet systems, identity, and compliance controls
• Design robust data pipelines, storage, and API layers
• Own production readiness, including monitoring, alerting, SLOs, and incident response processes
• Consumer products
• Oversee development of mobile (iOS/Android) and web applications delivered under partner branding
• Ensure high-quality user experience across consumer touchpoints
• Token & rewards infrastructure
• Lead design and integration of tokenised reward systems, including smart contracts and distribution logic
• Manage wallet integrations and fiat on/off-ramps in collaboration with external providers
• Integrations
• Build and maintain APIs connecting to external data feeds, ticketing systems, commerce platforms, and sponsor tools
• Leadership & team
• Hire, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering team
• Establish engineering standards, documentation practices, and development workflows
• Act as a hands-on technical leader while progressively transitioning to strategic oversight

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building consumer-facing technology products
• Proven experience delivering at least one 0-to-1 platform
• Track record of shipping and operating products at scale (100K+ users)
• Strong backend engineering background (distributed systems, real-time data, API design)
• Experience designing production-grade systems with high reliability requirements
• Comfortable working across frontend, backend, and infrastructure layers
• Strong written and verbal communication skills (architecture docs, technical strategy, roadmap planning)

Strongly preferred

• Experience with loyalty, gaming, or marketplace-style mechanics (e.g. rewards, auctions, prediction-style systems)
• Familiarity with blockchain or tokenised systems (smart contracts, wallets, settlement flows)
• Background in security-sensitive or compliance-aware systems
• Experience building white-label or multi-tenant platforms

Technical environment (current / planned)

• Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, Python; Go or Rust exposure is a plus
• Mobile: React Native or Flutter; native iOS (Swift) / Android (Kotlin) experience advantageous
• Infrastructure: Cloud-native (GCP), Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines
• Data: PostgreSQL, Redis, event streaming (Kafka or equivalent)
• Web3 exposure: Solidity fundamentals, wallet integrations, token mechanics