Automation Engineer

The Role

Ziina is building a dedicated automation function within Operations to enable every team in the company to move faster with fewer resources. We're looking for a technically strong Automation Engineer to be the first hire in this function — someone who can take ambiguous problems from internal teams, build proof-of-concept solutions quickly, and ship them with the documentation and monitoring needed for others to own long-term.

This role sits at the intersection of operations and engineering. Your work will be cross-functional, building automations for compliance, finance, risk, customer support, and other non-engineering teams. You'll use low-code platforms for rapid iteration and contribute directly to the backend codebase when automations touch production systems. We already use agentic workflows, LLM-powered data extraction, and RAG systems in production — you should be comfortable evaluating when AI is the right tool and when simpler automation is better.

As an Automation Engineer at Ziina you will:

• Build 0-to-1 automations for internal teams: Take requests from the Automation Service Desk, scope solutions, and ship using agentic flow orchestrators, or custom code — whatever fits the problem.
• Contribute to the backend codebase: Write production-grade code for automations that touch production systems, following engineering standards and submitting PRs for review.
• Triage and prioritise the automation backlog: Work with stakeholders across the company to scope requests, set expectations, and sequence delivery based on impact.
• Document and hand off: Deliver every automation with clear inputs/outputs, runbooks, error handling, and alerting — then train the requesting team to own it day-to-day.
• Maintain the automation register: Ensure all live automations meet go-live checklist criteria and are properly documented and monitored.
• Backstop orphaned automations: Catch things that break or lose owners before they become incidents — act as the safety net for the company's automation estate.
• Join weekly triage with Engineering: Participate in a joint sync to assign ownership on cross-functional requests, surface dependencies, and unblock delivery.
• Build with AI where it makes sense: Evaluate and deploy AI-powered solutions (agentic workflows, LLMs, RAG) alongside traditional automation, choosing the right tool for the problem.

To succeed in this role, you likely:

• Have 2+ years building automations, internal tools, or backend systems in a professional setting.
• Write code that's production-ready and can sit alongside engineering work without hand-holding.
• Have hands-on experience with at least one low-code platform such as n8n, Retool, or Zapier.
• Are comfortable querying and working directly with production databases using SQL.
• Have experience with REST APIs, webhooks, and stitching systems together.
• Write things down so others can own what you build — clear runbooks, input/output specs, and handoff materials are second nature.
• Can prioritise across competing requests from multiple teams, make decisions with incomplete information, and ship without hand-holding.
• Bring a builder mentality: high integrity, clear communication, comfort with ambiguity, and genuine motivation to make other people's work easier.

What would amaze us

• Experience with ML in production — risk/fraud models.
• Familiarity with Git workflows, code review processes, and CI/CD basics.
• Background in fintech, payments, or regulated industries.
• Experience building for non-technical stakeholders (compliance, finance, operations teams).
• Exposure to process design or business operations — understanding how teams actually work helps you automate the right things.

About Ziina

Ziina’s mission is to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East. We are building MENA’s consumer and SMB financial platform, starting with a peer-to-peer and merchant wallet. Our team have backgrounds from Apple, Uber, Stripe, Klarna, Revolut, Yandex, and Nubank. Ziina’s payments volumes have grown by 10x YoY for the last two years. The team have built a product that is beloved by the UAE and is the recipient of 8 international design awards, including the Red Dot Award and the UX Design Award. Our last round was a $22 million Series A from top-tier investors globally including Altos Ventures, Fintech Collective, Activant, Long Journey Ventures and Y Combinator. Our angel investors include early employees and executives at Revolut, Stripe, Venmo, Brex, Checkout.com, Notion, and Deel.

Join us in shaping the future of financial freedom. Every role here is an opportunity to make a real impact. Let’s build something that matters together.