Senior Backend Engineer - Asset Sales

M-KOPA Ltd; Cape Town, Johannesburg; Hybrid; ZAR 1,996,000 - 2,994,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Growth Shares

On-Call Allowance

Job summary

At M-KOPA, we are expanding our engineering team to build AI-native financial technology at scale. As a Senior Backend Engineer in the Asset Sales group, you will own distributed C# and .NET microservices on Azure, driving end-to-end delivery in an event-driven architecture.

This fully remote role spans UK, Europe and Africa, with focus on production reliability, observability, and collaboration across time zones.

Qualifications

• Strong grasp of C# and .NET development.
• Experience with event-driven messaging and microservices.
• Proficient in Azure and Kubernetes environments.
• Ability to collaborate across distributed teams and time zones.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate distributed C#/.NET microservices on Azure.
• Own end-to-end delivery from idea to production.
• Contribute to an event-driven architecture at scale.
• Use observability tooling to ensure production reliability.

Skills

C#

.NET development

Event-driven systems

Azure

Kubernetes

Microservices

Distributed teams

Tools

Azure Service Bus

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Kubernetes

Grafana

Application Insights

Job description

Join our expanding engineering team!

We're hiring a permanent Senior Backend Engineer to join our Asset Sales group as we scale one of the most important parts of M-KOPA's FinTech platform. Build distributed, event-driven microservices and help shape what AI-native engineering looks like at M-KOPA.

The Impact

Your code will directly power the systems that put smartphones and e-motorbikes into the hands of Every Day Earners across Africa. We've already helped over 10 million customers access more than $2 billion in credit. It's your chance to be part of something that's literally transforming lives across an entire continent

The Opportunity

Mission-driven engineering: Every service you build helps expand financial inclusion for under-banked populations

Global recognition: Join a company named by the Financial Times as one of Africa's fastest-growing companies for five consecutive years (2022–2026)

Scale challenges: Build backend systems serving millions across multiple African markets

AI-native from day one: We're actively embracing AI as part of the engineering craft, not bolting it on

Fully distributed: Work remotely with diverse teams across UK, Europe, and Africa

What You'll Do

At M-KOPA, you'll build and operate distributed C# and .NET microservices on Azure, working within an event-driven architecture at significant scale. This is an outcomes-driven role: we care far more about the value you create than where you sit or how many hours you're online. You'll own what you build end-to-end — from idea, through implementation and deployment, into production and iteration.

Technical Environment

• Modern C# stack: Distributed C# and .NET microservices




• Cloud & orchestration: Hosted on Azure using Kubernetes




• Architecture: Event-driven, supporting products used at significant scale




• Observability: Grafana, Azure Application Insights, logs, traces, and metrics




• AI tooling: Claude and other AI tools used throughout the engineering workflow — design exploration, code generation and review, test writing, incident investigation, and technical communication

Our Engineering Approach

• AI-native engineering: We want engineers who tinker — experimenting with new tools, agents, and workflows, and sharing what works




• Guardrails as we accelerate: Automated tests, SLOs, alerting, observability, and deployment safeguards around everything we ship




• Own it beyond the pull request: Design for idempotency, retries, out-of-order events, and failure modes, and know how your services behave in production




• The Campfire Rule: Leave the systems you touch a little better than you found them




• On-call as feedback, not heroics: Engineers who build our systems also help operate them, using incidents to make the platform more resilient

What You Need

We're looking for a senior engineer who's curious, autonomous, and highly trusted. You're comfortable owning the entire software stack — including supporting infrastructure — throughout its lifecycle, and you see production data, not just deployment, as the real measure of "done."

Required Experience

• Strong grasp of C# and .NET development




• Experience with event-driven systems - We use Azure Service Bus, but would love to hear from you if you have experience with similar messaging technology (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)




• Microservices architecture experience, ideally on Azure and Kubernetes




• Experience using observability tooling (e.g. Grafana, Application Insights) to understand production behaviour




• Comfort using AI tools as part of a daily engineering workflow (design, code review, testing, incident investigation)




• DevOps culture mindset, including on-call/production ownership




• Proven ability to collaborate effectively in distributed teams across time zones




• Continuous learning mindset and openness to feedback

Location & Benefits

• Fully remote role, collaborating during core GMT working hours




• Benefits package, which includes Bonus, Growth Shares & On-Call Allowance




• Work with diverse teams distributed across UK, Europe, and Africa




• Personalised training budget to support your development




• Home office setup budget




• Professional development programs and coaching partnerships




• Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements




• Well-being support and 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




• 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 since 2010 through clean energy, refurbished devices, and e-mobility

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.

Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026), named on CNBC's World’s Top Fintech Companies 2025 & 2026 and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we've served over 10 million customers, unlocking $2 billion in cumulative credit for the everyday earners across Africa, in addition to over 10,000 e-bikes financed in Kenya.

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 shall ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as internships or apprenticeships.

M-KOPA does not collect/chargeany money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This meansthat we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the advertised closing date.

If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process, these include; criminal records, identification verification, academic qualifications, employment dates and employer references.