Mobile Engineering Manager

About Us

talabat is a premier food and grocery delivery platform operating in nine countries across the MENA region, facilitating hundreds of thousands of daily orders through its mobile applications. As part of the Delivery Hero network spanning over 50 countries, talabat's mobile engineering significantly influences how millions shop, eat, and experience convenience.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Mobile Engineering Manager to lead one of our dedicated mobile engineering teams responsible for crafting the talabat consumer experience on iOS and Android platforms. This leadership position involves overseeing feature delivery that impacts millions daily, including discovery, ordering, real-time tracking, and payment processes.

This role requires hands-on leadership — you will not be writing code daily but will stay close enough to the codebase to inform architectural decisions, resolve engineering roadblocks, and uphold rigorous technical standards. You will lead a team of 6 to 10 mobile engineers and collaborate closely with product management, design, and backend teams.

Our engineering culture embraces eXtreme Programming (XP) principles such as pair programming, test-driven development (TDD), and continuous delivery. Even if you haven't worked in an XP setting before, what matters most is your commitment to quality as a means to speed and your enthusiasm for leadership within this approach.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and guide a team of 6–10 iOS and Android engineers in planning, developing, and deploying customer-focused features.
• Ensure release quality by leading testing strategies, tracking crash analytics and performance indicators, and maintaining steady release schedules.
• Collaborate with product managers and designers to prioritize feature development balancing user impact and technical constraints.
• Make critical architectural decisions concerning mobile design patterns, including modularization, dependency injection, reactive programming, and navigation structures.
• Mentor engineers through one-on-one sessions, paired programming, and structured career growth discussions.
• Coordinate dependencies across backend, platform, and infrastructure teams to streamline integration.
• Drive the establishment and evolution of mobile engineering standards and best practices at talabat.

Success Benchmarks

• Within 90 days: Gain comprehensive understanding of the codebase, team workflows, and stakeholder networks; complete one-on-one meetings with all team members to assess strengths and development areas.
• Within 6 months: Ensure the team delivers incremental value reliably and improves at least one metric related to team health such as cycle time, test coverage, onboarding efficiency, or employee satisfaction.
• Within 12 months: Develop the technical roadmap for your domain, support at least one engineer’s career advancement, and establish trusted partnerships with product and design leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Over 6 years of hands-on experience in mobile engineering for iOS, Android, or cross-platform frameworks.
• At least 2 years of leadership experience managing mobile engineering teams, including hiring, evaluating performance, and fostering career growth.
• In-depth knowledge of mobile app architectures and ability to analyze trade-offs between native vs cross-platform, modular vs monolithic designs, and various state management solutions.
• Proven track record in releasing mobile apps to large-scale user bases (100,000+ daily active users) prioritizing performance, reliability, and user satisfaction.
• Strong commitment to automated testing and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices in mobile environments.
• Experience managing mobile releases, feature flag implementation, and controlled rollout procedures.
• Adept at adapting to dynamic, fast-paced product environments driven by user data.

Preferred but Not Required

• Familiarity with eXtreme Programming (XP) methodologies including TDD, pair/mob programming, and trunk-based development.
• Understanding of Domain-Driven Design (DDD) or event-driven architectures.
• Experience with Swift/SwiftUI for iOS and Kotlin/Jetpack Compose for Android development.
• Background working on e-commerce, delivery, or marketplace mobile applications.
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as AWS.
• Experience collaborating across multiple time zones or with distributed engineering teams.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Passionate about nurturing growth and capability development in engineers beyond merely delivering code.
• Committed to mobile craftsmanship including smooth animations, quick app startups, and accessible user interfaces.
• Comfortable making informed technical decisions amid incomplete data.
• Desires a leadership role where mobile technology is central to the product strategy rather than a secondary concern.

Less Suitable for Candidates Who

• Prefer exclusive people management roles without technical involvement.
• Seek stable, slow-paced workplaces with long-term planning cycles.
• Are uneasy with collaborative coding approaches such as pair programming.

Additional Information

talabat offers a structured career development framework for engineering leaders, with multiple progression levels rewarding increased impact, strategic ownership, and people leadership abilities:

• Engineering Manager: Leads a single team, responsible for delivery and people development within their squad and domain.
• Senior Engineering Manager: Oversees multiple teams or a full domain, setting technical direction and growing future leaders.
• Engineering Director: Manages engineering across a tribe or multiple domains, shaping technical vision and collaborating with senior business leaders.
• Senior Engineering Director: Guides engineering for multiple tribes or entire product lines, influencing company-wide technical strategies and executive representation.