About the job
Join our growing FinTech Engineering team! We’re recruiting a Software Engineering Team Lead to spearhead the delivery of our new loan origination architecture, compliance systems, and pricing platform – infrastructure that will power M-KOPA’s next phase of expansion across Africa.
The Impact
Your architecture will directly shape how millions of people access credit for the first time. We’ve already served over 7 million customers and unlocked more than $2 billion in credit since we began. Every system you design, every engineer you develop, and every decision you make contributes to a platform that’s quite literally transforming financial inclusion across an entire continent 🌍
The Opportunity
🎯 Mission-driven engineering: Your daily work enables affordable smartphones, digital loans, and financial services for Africa’s Every Day Earners — people for whom traditional finance simply doesn’t work.
🏆 Global recognition: Join a FinTech 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 five consecutive years (2022–2026).
🚀 Scale that matters: You’ll be architecting systems that process over 2 million payments daily across five markets — and building for the next 10 million customers.
🌱 Environmental impact: We’re carbon-negative, having avoided 2.155 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions across our product portfolio.
What You’ll Do
At M-KOPA, you’ll lead a team of backend engineers through both greenfield and legacy projects, owning the full software lifecycle from design ideation through to production and eventual decommissioning. Our engineering teams work under a true DevOps culture — with infrastructure as code, observability, automated testing, and continuous delivery treated as first-order concerns, not afterthoughts.
You’ll set architectural direction, partner closely with your Product Manager counterpart on roadmap planning and prioritisation, and serve as a servant leader who grows the people around you while shipping high-quality, impactful software.
Technical Environment 💻
- Languages & frameworks: C#/.NET
- Cloud: We work in Azure, and welcome experience across AWS or GCP
- Architecture: Event-driven systems and microservice development – we use Azure Service Bus, and welcome experience with similar messaging technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
- Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker
- Observability: Prometheus, Grafana
- Engineering culture: DevOps, infrastructure as code, automated testing across all environments including production, continuous delivery
Our Engineering Approach 🚀
- Full ownership: Teams own their solutions end-to-end – from inception through production support to decommissioning.
- Servant leadership: We lead by coaching and enabling, not directing.
- Quality by default: Observability, monitoring, and automated testing are built in from day one.
- Continuous improvement: We foster a culture of innovation within a supportive, dynamic team environment.
- Product partnership: Engineering and Product work as genuine counterparts — planning together, prioritising together, delivering together.
What You Need
We’re looking for an experienced, low-ego engineering leader who brings both technical depth and a genuine passion for growing people.
Required Experience:
- Strong hands-on background in C#/.NET backend development
- Proven experience with Azure, AWS, or GCP – we work in Azure but welcome experience across major cloud providers
- Solid understanding of event-driven architecture and microservice development – we use Azure Service Bus, and welcome experience with similar messaging technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
- Experience leading or mentoring engineers in a collaborative team environment
- Ability to set technical direction and provide architectural guidance
- Comfortable working with Product to shape roadmaps and drive delivery
The Team
You’ll lead a close-knit, focused engineering team with real end-to-end ownership over a significant part of the M-KOPA platform – including loan origination, compliance systems, and a new pricing engine. You’ll have a dedicated Product Manager as your counterpart and operate with genuine autonomy over technical direction.
Location & Benefits
- 🌍 Fully remote role within UTC -1 to UTC +3 time zones
- 💼 Work with diverse teams across the UK, Europe, and Africa
- 📈 Professional development programmes and coaching partnerships
- 👨👩👧 Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements
- 💚 Well-being support and genuine career growth opportunities
Our Mission 🌍
We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model. We strive to drive greater inclusion of women, youth, and low-income communities.
Our Impact 💚
Our technology has created measurable change:
- Connected 📱: 2.5 million first-time smartphone users connected to the mobile internet
- Prosperous 💰: 70% of customers use M-KOPA products for income generation, with 35,000 livelihoods created for agents
- Green 🌱: 2.155 million tonnes of CO₂ avoided through clean energy and circular economy products, with over 127,700 circular economy products provided
