[Hiring] Lead People Partner @M-KOPA

Role Description

Join our growing People team! We're hiring a Lead People Partner to own the people agenda for our Technology organisation as M-KOPA scales the infrastructure behind financial inclusion for everyday earners across Africa.

The Impact

• Your leadership will directly shape how we build, retain and grow the engineering talent powering our mission.
• We've now reached 10 million customers and unlocked $2+ billion in credit across five African markets.
• This role sits right at the centre of the machine that makes that growth possible.

The Opportunity

• Mission-driven HR: Partner directly with our CTO and their leadership team across Engineering, Data, Analytics, IT and Security.
• Global recognition: Join a company named by TIME 100 as one of the world's most influential, and by the Financial Times as Africa's fastest-growing company for 5 consecutive years (2022–2026).
• Scale challenges: Design the org structure for a globally distributed, senior engineering population spread across Africa, Europe and the UK.
• Environmental impact: Work for a carbon-negative company that has displaced over 2 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

What You'll Do

You'll act as trusted advisor to our engineering, data and platform leaders, aligning people strategy to roadmap execution and organisational evolution. You'll hold overall accountability for people partnering across the full Technology and Product organisation, with one Senior People Partner reporting to you covering Product and adjacent functions. Your own focus is Engineering: a globally distributed, senior population where genuine fluency in how engineering organisations are built, levelled and retained matters far more than adjacency to them.

• Lead org design: workforce planning, levelling and team transformation in a function scaling and reshaping simultaneously.
• Own Engineering and Product end to end: full accountability for people partnering across both, with a Senior People Partner reporting to you.
• Lead and grow a partner: coach, develop and set direction for your direct report, building the partnering standard for the whole technology portfolio.
• Use people analytics to inform action: partner with Centres of Excellence to turn data into decisions on capability, attrition and cost.
• Drive distributed team effectiveness: optimise performance, engagement and team dynamics in a fast-paced, asynchronous, multi-country environment.
• Handle complex employee relations: own the senior and sensitive end of the ER caseload for your portfolio.

Your Environment

• Reporting line: People Director, alongside a peer group of senior partners covering our operating markets.
• Client group: CTO and their leadership team across Engineering, Data, Analytics, IT and Security, plus accountability for Product via your direct report.
• Team: one Senior People Partner reporting to you.
• Population: globally distributed, senior engineering talent, majority based across Africa, Europe and the UK.

Our Approach

• We scale and reshape our engineering function at the same time, so org design here is a live, ongoing discipline, not a one-off project.
• We hold both a portfolio and a team in this role, which is unusual even within our own People function.
• We lean on Centres of Excellence for data and specialist ER support, freeing you to focus on judgement and stakeholder relationships.
• We expect direct engagement with C-level leaders, with genuine autonomy attached.

What You Need

• Senior HR experience partnering with engineering organisations in a scaling technology or fintech business.
• Experience leading or formally coaching HR business partners, with the ability to raise the standard of someone else's work.
• Proven org design depth: you've led real structural change (levelling, spans and layers, function redesign), not just supported it.
• Strategic and operational range: equally comfortable designing long-term org strategy and working at team level.
• Remote and global savvy: experience supporting cross-cultural teams across multiple regions.
• Strong business acumen: able to translate between people priorities and business outcomes at leadership level.
• Comfortable operating with autonomy at C-level.
• Employee relations judgement across more than one jurisdiction, knowing when to own it and when to bring in specialists.

Location & Benefits

• Fully Remote role - Can be Based in the UK, Nigeria or specific locations across Europe.
• Reports to the People Director.
• Professional development and coaching partnerships.
• Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements.
• Well-being support and career growth opportunities.
• Direct exposure to our CTO and CPO, with real influence over leadership-level people decisions.

Our Mission

We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model, driving greater inclusion of women, youth and low-income communities.

Our Impact

• Included: 10 million customers, $2+ billion in credit unlocked since 2010.
• Prosperous: 70% of customers use their M-KOPA product for income generation, 35,000 livelihoods created for sales agents.
• Green: over 2.1 million tonnes of CO₂ avoided, with 127,700 circular economy products sold since 2010.

Why M-KOPA?

At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.

Important Notice

M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice.

M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process.

If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process.