Senior Development Lead - Full Stack Microservices

About Code Ninja

Code Ninja is a full-stack AI and engineering delivery company helping Saudi enterprises, software acquirers, and government entities modernize systems and operationalize intelligence across mission-critical workflows. Operating out of Riyadh with delivery capability across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region, Code Ninja builds AI-native infrastructure, embedded engineering capability, and owned application platforms — trusted by 240+ organizations across sectors including government digitization, energy, financial services, logistics, and healthcare.

Through embedded teams, AI pods, and global capability centers, Code Ninja combines global delivery standards with in-market engineering talent. Engagements are structured so that the systems, code, and capability built stay with the client organization — aligned with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 ambitions around digital sovereignty and local talent development.

We're looking for a hands-on Senior Development Lead with strong experience in Low-Level Design (LLD), Java Spring Boot, Microservices, API development and security, and React JS. This is a player-coach role — someone who leads the development team while staying deeply involved in architecture discussions, LLD, coding, code reviews, troubleshooting, and technical delivery. The ideal candidate combines strong technical expertise with team leadership, driving the team toward scalable, secure, high-quality applications.

• Lead technical design and development of complex applications and digital platforms.
• Translate high-level architecture and business requirements into detailed Low-Level Design (LLD) — component design, service boundaries, data models, API contracts, integration patterns, sequence flows, and error handling.
• Review and challenge technical designs for scalability, maintainability, security, and performance.
• Drive adoption of engineering best practices, design patterns, coding standards, and reusable components.
• Provide technical guidance to developers and resolve complex technical issues and blockers.

• Design and develop scalable Java/Spring Boot microservices; lead development of RESTful APIs and backend services.
• Define microservice architecture, service-to-service communication, exception handling, logging, monitoring, and resilience patterns.
• Apply best practices across Spring Boot, Spring Security, JPA/Hibernate, database integration, distributed transactions, caching, and event-driven architecture.
• Perform hands-on coding for critical features and technically complex components.
• Troubleshoot production and non-production issues and drive root-cause analysis.

• Design secure, scalable, production-grade APIs; define request/response contracts, validation rules, error codes, and versioning.
• Apply strong understanding of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, Authentication & Authorization, API Gateway, and Role-Based Access Control.
• Ensure APIs comply with enterprise security and integration standards, working closely with security, architecture, integration, and platform teams.

• Provide technical leadership for React JS front-end development, including scalable and reusable UI components and front-end architecture.
• Integrate React applications with backend REST APIs, handling authentication, authorization, API errors, and session management.
• Review front-end code and guide developers on performance, usability, and coding standards.
• Contribute hands-on to React development for critical features and technical challenges.

• Stay actively involved in development rather than functioning only as a people/team manager.
• Personally contribute…