Junior Software Engineer

Description:

You write production code from your first sprint. You will build the services, APIs, and interfaces that run inside enterprise systems across the UAE and GCC — under the review of architects who read every line, and to engineering standards you will be held to rather than eased into.

We hire juniors for trajectory, not inventory. A long tool list on a CV counts for less than a small thing you built well and can defend under questioning. You will use AI-assisted development tools as a daily instrument and be expected to move fast with them — but speed without judgement is a defect, and you own every line you ship regardless of who or what wrote it.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Build and ship features in production services — REST endpoints, backend services, and front-end interfaces — under architect review and to a defined definition of done.
• Write tests as part of the work, not after it — unit and integration tests that a reviewer trusts. Untested code is unfinished code.
• Work in a Git-based pull request workflow — branch, commit cleanly, raise reviewable PRs, respond to code review without ego, and keep CI green.
• Integrate external APIs and data sources — authentication, pagination, retries, rate limits, and failure handling that does not fall over in production.
• Debug across the stack — reproduce, read logs and traces, isolate the root cause, and fix the cause rather than the symptom.
• Use AI-assisted development environments (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery — then review, test, and explain what they produced.
• Document what you build — clear READMEs, API contracts, and honest commit and PR descriptions your teammates can work from.
• Participate in design discussions — ask why a design was chosen, propose alternatives, and learn to argue trade-offs rather than preferences.

MUST-HAVE: ENGINEERING FOUNDATION

Programming. Strong Python — clean, readable, tested code; functions and classes, error handling, packages and virtual environments. Equivalent strength in another language plus demonstrable ability to become productive in Python quickly is acceptable.

APIs & Web Services. REST fundamentals and the ability to build an endpoint end to end (FastAPI, Flask, Django, or Node/Express). HTTP semantics, JSON, status codes, and authentication basics.

Front-End. TypeScript/JavaScript and one modern framework — Angular preferred, React acceptable — with solid HTML and CSS. You should be able to put a working interface in front of a service you built.

Databases. SQL that goes beyond SELECT * — joins, aggregation, indexing basics, and sane schema design. PostgreSQL or SQL Server experience preferred.

Version Control & Tooling. Git in daily use (branching, pull requests, resolving merge conflicts), plus fluency in VS Code or Visual Studio and comfort on the command line.

Computer Science Fundamentals. Data structures, algorithmic complexity, object-oriented design, exception handling, and a working understanding of asynchronous execution and concurrency.

Testing. Hands-on with a unit testing framework (pytest, Jest, or equivalent) and able to say what separates a useful test from a decorative one.

AI-Native Development. You already build with AI coding assistants and can explain, line by line, what the tool produced and why it is correct. “The AI wrote it” is never an explanation for a defect.

GOOD TO HAVE — SIGNALS OF TRAJECTORY

• Docker fundamentals, or a CI/CD pipeline (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions) you set up yourself rather than inherited.
• Cloud exposure — Azure preferred; AWS or GCP equally welcome as evidence you can operate beyond localhost.
• Calling an LLM API from your own code (Anthropic, OpenAI, or open-source models) — a working prototype you can walk us through counts for more than a certificate.
• Message queues, caching (Redis), or any experience with systems that must stay up under load.
• Open-source contributions, side projects, hackathons, or competitive programming — anything that shows you write code when nobody is grading you.