[Hiring] Technical Lead @Djamo

Role Description

As our new Tech Lead reporting to our Head of Engineering, you will oversee a team of engineers, making architectural and design decisions, guiding team members in technical matters, and supervising system modifications.

As a Leader, you will:

• Mentor team members
• Delegate tasks
• Give and receive feedback
• Evaluate risks
• Resolve conflicts

As a Developer, you will:

• Design, develop, and scale backend systems that power critical financial services for users across Francophone Africa
• Bring deep technical expertise
• Take ownership of complex system design challenges
• Continuously raise the bar on code quality and system performance

You will work closely with cross-functional teams, including product, design, and frontend engineering, to build performant, secure, and reliable services.

Your Key Responsibilities will include:

• Lead a cross-functional team (70% of your time)
• Own the delivery and technical direction of a product squad (engineers, designer, PM)
• Run the team: weekly 1:1s, regular feedback, career growth conversations, sprint coordination
• Break down projects into well-scoped work, manage dependencies, and keep the team shipping
• Partner closely with Product and Design to shape what gets built, not just how
• Raise the engineering bar across the org (20%)
• Architect, build, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable backend systems and services
• Be a technical sounding board for other tech leads and engineers
• Help first-time managers develop their leadership skills; give them patterns, not just advice
• Drive improvements to engineering practices: code review quality, testing strategy, CI/CD, design docs
• Contribute to architectural decisions that affect multiple teams
• Own the delivery and quality of backend features from concept to production
• Stay technical (30% overlap with above)
• Write code. Review code. You're in the codebase, not above it
• Lead by example on design quality, system thinking, and pragmatic trade-offs
• Own technical decisions for your squad. Escalate the right ones, decide the rest
• Build reusable code and libraries for future use
• Bring a strong perspective that inspires new ideas and motivates engineers to develop simple solutions to sophisticated problems
• Foster strong cross-function collaboration with Frontend, Product, and Support to develop world-class products
• Participate in the full development cycle: design, development, QA, experimentation, analysis, launch, and monitoring

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including production systems at scale
• 5+ years leading a team of engineers with direct people management (1:1s, feedback, growth plans; not just tech lead coordination)
• Strong experience with Typescript / Node.js, Python, Go, or similar backend languages
• Solid grasp of modern software engineering practices: version control (Git), CI/CD, code reviews, automated testing, monitoring, etc.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and infrastructure as code (Terraform)
• Strong understanding of relational and non-relational databases. Experience with PostgreSQL is a plus
• Fluent in English (written and spoken), French is a plus
• Experience in designing and implementing distributed systems that scale for millions of customers
• Entrepreneurial spirit. You are self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments
• The capacity to communicate and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences
• Sound knowledge of standard software engineering methodology, e.g., unit testing, code reviews, design documentation, continuous integration, and delivery

Requirements

• When faced with a tricky bug or an unfamiliar system, know how to unblock yourself, whether by digging deeper, asking teammates for help, or using tools like AI
• Care deeply about users - you build with the user's real needs in mind, advocating for simplicity and value in technical decisions
• You think about systems and outcomes looking beyond individual tasks to understand system-wide impact on performance, scalability, and reliability
• Stays current with new tools and practices

Nice to Have

• Experience working with event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Prior experience in a startup or hyper-growth environment
• Familiarity with mobile backend (API performance, offline-first, rate limiting)
• Contributions to open-source projects or engineering blogs

Benefits

• A stimulating work environment
• The value of participating in the evolution of a startup that aims to rapidly expand throughout French-speaking Africa
• A collaborative work environment with a strong team spirit
• A culture of continuous employee development

Type of contract

• Contractor via DEEL - for non-residents of Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal
• CDD / CDI - for residents of Côte d'Ivoire or Sénégal

Desired start date

ASAP

Sector of activity

Mobile Financial Services