Senior Software Engineer

We need a senior engineer who leads technical initiatives, designs complex systems and drives architectural decisions - in a space that is still emerging. The team is building banking services for entrepreneurs, small businesses and side-hustlers who haven't had suitable products before. The engineering you do here has a direct line to real economic change for people who have been underserved for too long. If you thrive on ownership, ambiguity and direct business exposure - read on. What you'll do here Take ownership of selected back-end domains within our emerging markets platform Lead the design of complex back-end systems and make architectural decisions that drive our technical standards Build and maintain integrations that power entrepreneur accounts, merchant acquisition and payment services - including account lifecycles, transactions, payment rails and cards Design and implement distributed, event-driven and domain-driven solutions Mentor and provide leadership to the existing engineering team Engage directly with stakeholders and senior business leaders to translate business objectives into technical solutions Evaluate and introduce technologies that move the platform forward and improve development processes Proactively identify questions, gaps and opportunities beyond your immediate tasks - the team needs people who look further than the ticket in front of them Our tech stack Java and Spring Boot - your primary back-end environment Kafka - event-driven architecture and messaging PostgreSQL - our primary data store AWS - where we build and run at scale Terraform - infrastructure as code and DevOps tooling Odin ecosystem - internal tooling and platform integrations AI-assisted development - we use AI tooling actively to amplify what engineers can do What you bring Experience 6+ years of proven back-end software development experience, delivering production-grade systems at scale Deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot within event-driven or distributed systems Hands-on experience with Kafka (Or Similar), PostgreSQL and AWS Working knowledge of Terraform or DevOps practices is a strong advantage Experience with domain-driven design and event-driven architectures is highly valued Experience in payments, fintech or financial services environments preferred The ability to engage confidently with senior business stakeholders - not just engineers Proven ability to work independently and take ownership Education Minimum: Grade 12 National Certificate Preferred: A relevant tertiary qualification in information technology Knowledge You can apply expert-level knowledge and develop others' understanding across: Event-driven and domain-driven architectures Advanced Java programming and Spring Boot ecosystem Distributed systems design, including the saga pattern and resilience patterns such as circuit breakers and bulkheads Database systems and query optimisation (SQL and NoSQL) RESTful API design and integration Message-based systems and Kafka event streaming Cloud computing platforms and services (AWS) Infrastructure as code using Terraform Testing practices - unit, integration and contract testing IT systems development processes (SDLC), agile delivery and version control