Software Engineer I - Backend | NextGen Engineering

Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East - making it easy to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Our purpose is simple: to simplify and improve people’s lives and build an awesome organisation that inspires.

Since 2012, Careem has enabled earnings for over 2.5 million Captains, simplified the lives of more than 70 million customers, and built a platform where the region’s best talent and entrepreneurs thrive. We operate in 70+ cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan.

We’re now entering our next chapter - one powered by AI. We’re looking for AI talent: curious problem-solvers who know how to apply AI to build tools, automate workflows, and create real impact. Whether it’s streamlining operations, enhancing customer experience, or reimagining internal systems - we want people who can make Careem work smarter and move faster.

About the team

At Careem, the mission for the NextGen program is to help grow our new joint Engineering by learning how to write Clean Code, use SOLID principle techniques, and design reliable systems. The ultimate goal is to train the new Engineers to build Engineering excellence foundations with high standards. Our program covers all the areas of Careem tech be it Cyber Security, Data, Infrastructure, and all the Software Engineering tracks like Backend, Frontend as well as Mobile.

We are looking for software engineers to join our team of talented engineers that share a common interest in distributed backend systems, their scalability, and continued development. You will work alongside a top talent for an accelerated learning path. You will have access to some of the most exciting projects and advanced tech for accelerated learning and exposure.

You will be responsible for maintaining some of our services that power the Careem Engine, scaling highly distributed systems, and continuously documenting and improving our engineering practices. These large-scale, distributed systems handle everything from user requests to payment processing.

What you'll do:

Our tech stack is Java 8 and Spring Boot, Micro-Service Architecture, SQL and no-SQL DBs, and AWS infrastructure. Key responsibilities include:

• Development of our distributed backend system to meet the challenging functional, scalability, and reliability requirements for our fast-growing business.
• Maintain features and systems, with an emphasis on code quality, maintainability, readability, and testing.
• Facilitate collaboration with other engineers, product owners, and designers to solve interesting and challenging problems across our platform.
• Be a valued member of an autonomous, cross-functional agile team.
• You care about quality and you know what it means to ship high-quality code.

What you'll need:

• Fresh graduates are encouraged to apply! 
• The ideal candidate will have a passionate commitment to improving the lives of people, an insane focus on excellence and customer service, and a strong alignment with our core values: being bold, focused, agile and collaborative.

Must have:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or other related technical fields.
• Understanding of Object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms.
• Ability to solve complex problems.
• Must be able to write clean and maintainable code (must love coding!).
• Ability to effectively articulate technical challenges and solutions; deal with loosely defined problems and fast-changing requirements & think abstractly.
• Passionate about learning new technologies and working on a product of massive scale and impact.
• Able to communicate effectively.
• Attention to detail.

Nice to have:

• Knowledge of AWS
• Knowledge of clean code principles
• Deep understanding of design patterns
• Demonstrated ability of test-driven development