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 KSA, UAE and Kuwait, and partners with leading global and regional brands such as SHEIN, Jarir, noon, Amazon, IKEA, eXtra and Farfetch as well as small and medium businesses. 

Tamara is Saudi’s first fintech unicorn and is backed by Sanabil Investments, SNB Capital, Checkout.com, amongst others, operating out of its headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with other regional and global support offices.

Your Role 

We're seeking an Engineering Manager I for one of our core engineering teams. As an Engineering Manager I, you will be crucial in leading a team to develop and enhance our payment solutions. You will guide your team in building and owning a meaningful segment of our platform, ensuring the delivery of high-quality features that create the unique experiences only Tamara can offer.

Drawing on your proficiency in software development and team leadership, you will be responsible for providing technical direction for your team, fostering a culture of quality, and driving the execution of your team's roadmap. You will lead a focused team of 4-6 engineers (Backend, Frontend, QA) and collaborate closely with designers, analysts, and product experts. Your responsibilities will center on guiding technical decisions, ensuring on-time delivery of the team's roadmap, and fostering the career growth of your engineers.

You are a driven, determined, curious team player, knowing 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: Inspire and motivate a team of 4-6 engineers within a single squad. Provide clear direction for the team, aligning their goals with the company vision and strategy. Build a healthy environment of trust, feedback, and a strong sense of ownership.
• People Development: Develop talent through ongoing coaching, mentoring, and providing challenging growth opportunities. Give candid and constructive feedback frequently. Run effective 1:1s, assess performance, and play a key role in helping us attract, develop, and retain great engineering talent for your team.
• Technical Contribution & Ownership: As a significant technical contributor, you will maintain a strong understanding of your team's software architecture. You will provide technical direction, facilitate technical decision-making in collaboration with senior engineers, and drive quality practices like code reviews and testing. You will support the adoption of engineering best practices such as CI/CD and observability.
• Execution & Delivery: Plan and manage your team's execution to deliver on roadmap commitments. Help the team break down complex topics into smaller, manageable tasks in collaboration with Product and UX. Identify risks early, communicate them to stakeholders, and work actively to mitigate them.
• Team Performance: You are accountable for your team's on-time delivery. You will help define and refine team-level processes to improve effectiveness and ensure alignment with broader organizational goals.
• Collaboration: Partner with Product and business leadership to influence product strategy and drive alignment between technical goals and product priorities. Work closely with other Engineering Managers and the architecture board to ensure consistency and shared learning.

Your Expertise

• You have 1-3 years of experience in an engineering leadership role (e.g., Team Lead, Tech Lead, or Engineering Manager), guiding a team of at least 4 engineers.
• You have a strong technical background in software development (e.g., Java, Go, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Messaging Queues, Cloud Services).
• You are motivated by working in a fast-paced, high-growth startup environment.
• You have a good understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban).
• Fintech/eCommerce experience is a plus.

Role Summary

We are seeking a Lead SOC Validation & Adversary Simulation Engineer to strengthen the effectiveness of our Security Operations Center (SOC / VSOC) by continuously validating detections, response workflows, and telemetry using adversary-informed testing techniques.

This role is SOC-owned and SOC-driven. The primary objective is to improve detection fidelity, reduce blind spots, and increase SOC readiness across vehicle, cloud, and other environments. Adversary simulation and Purple Team techniques are used as methods to harden SOC operations not as standalone Red Team activities.

Key Responsibilities

1. SOC Detection Validation & Assurance (Primary Focus)

• Own continuous validation of SOC detections across:
• Vehicle telemetry and in-vehicle IDS
• Telematics and backend services
• Cloud APIs, and other supporting systems
• Validate alerts against realistic attacker behavior, not synthetic rules
• Identify:
• Detection gaps
• Signal quality issues
• Excessive false positives or low-value alerts
• Partner with SOC engineers to improve alert logic, correlation, and response playbooks
1. Adversary Simulation in Support of SOC
• Design controlled adversary simulations to test SOC capabilities:
• API misuse and abuse
• Lateral movement
• Unauthorized diagnostics or ECU access
• Align scenarios to MITRE ATT&CK (Cloud API + Automotive)
• Coordinate with Red Team only when advanced exploitation is required
2. SOC Telemetry & Signal Engineering
• Work with platform and product teams to:
• Improve log coverage and quality
• Define high-value security signals
• Reduce noisy or redundant telemetry
• Influence what gets logged, where, and why—from ECUs to cloud services
• Help SOC prioritize telemetry based on risk and detection value
3. Incident Readiness & Response Validation
• Validate SOC incident response workflows through:
• Detection-driven exercises
• Tabletop scenarios informed by real attack paths
• Measure and improve:
• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
• Mean Time to Triage (MTTT)
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR)
• Ensure SOC procedures align with real attack timelines
4. Threat Modeling & Risk Alignment
• Leverage TARA / threat-modeling outputs to prioritize SOC coverage
• Ensure SOC monitoring aligns with:
• ISO/SAE 21434
• UNECE R155/R156
• Translate detection gaps into risk-based narratives for leadership and auditors
• Support audit evidence by demonstrating validated monitoring effectiveness
5. Automation & Continuous SOC Validation
• Build or enhance SOC validation automation, including:
• Detection testing frameworks
• Alert replay and validation pipelines
• Coverage and maturity dashboards
• Integrate validation workflows into:
• SIEM
• SOAR
• CI/CD where applicable
• Reduce manual SOC testing and increase repeatability
6. Metrics, Reporting & Leadership Communication
• Define SOC-focused KPIs such as:
• ATT&CK coverage by detection
• Detection efficacy over time
• Reduction in blind spots
• Produce clear SOC maturity and readiness reports
• Communicate findings to:
• SOC leadership
• Product security
• Engineering stakeholders

Required Qualifications

Technical Experience

• Cybersecurity with strong SOC, detection engineering, or incident response experience
• Deep understanding of:
• SOC operations and alert lifecycle
• Detection engineering and signal tuning
• Adversary techniques and kill chains
• Experience working with:
• SIEM and SOC tooling
• Cloud and API monitoring
• Network and system telemetry
• Strong scripting or automation skills (Python, Go, C)

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven experience leading SOC improvement initiatives
• Ability to influence detection priorities across teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Comfortable presenting to leadership and auditors