Engineering Lead: Hands-On, AI-First

About Us

SPICE is building the go-to platform for premium dining. We connect diners with unforgettable experiences and help top restaurants grow their loyalty and reach. We’re a small team that moves fast, ships what wows, and believes every decision should create value for us, our partners, and our users.

About The Role

This role is based in Amman, it's a zero-to-one engineering leadership position at a premium dining platform that's moving fast and building to last.

You'll own the technical foundation of SPICE: the architecture, the core systems, and the engineering culture we build around them. From product discovery to production ship, you'll be embedded across Product, Design, and QA, shaping what gets built and how it gets built.

We want someone who codes with conviction, leads with clarity, and knows how to grow a world-class engineering team from the ground up.

We're offering a compensation package (salary plus equity) that reflects the seniority of this role.

What You'll Achieve

• Design and own the entire backend and platform architecture

• Participate in product discovery shaping what gets built, not just how

• Build core product features end-to-end: backend, APIs, and web

• Ship API-first, event-driven systems that scale with the business

• Work directly with founders to translate product thinking into production systems

• Use AI tooling (Cursor, Claude, Copilot) as a core part of how you build

• Hire and grow a team of 3-4 engineers once the foundation is solid

• Own the SDLC; code reviews, quality standards, and site reliability

Skills You'll Need to Bring

• 7+ years of hands-on software engineering experience

• Some management experience: you've led or mentored at least a small engineering team (1-2 years of experience)

• Strong full-stack experience: you're comfortable owning backend architecture and writing frontend code when needed

• Zero-to-one experience: you've built foundational systems at an early-stage product or startup

• API-first thinking: you design systems to be clean, documented, and consumable from day one

• Genuine AI fluency: you already use AI tools daily to move faster, not just occasionally to try them

• Familiarity with search engines (e.g. ElastiSearch, Typesense etc.)

• Experience with building payment systems: wallets, ledgers, and transactions

• Hands-on experience with AI agent frameworks such as LangChain is a plus

Tech Stack

Node.js · TypeScript · NestJS · React · AWS · PostgreSQL · Event-driven architecture