Tech Lead / Staff Software Engineer

Akiba; Johannesburg; Hybrid; ZAR 30 000 - 70 000; Full time

Job summary

Join a dynamic seed-stage startup focused on providing dignified access to financial opportunities in Africa. As a Tech Lead, you'll be at the forefront of developing innovative solutions, guiding a collaborative team, and shaping the future of our Risk-Decisioning Platform. This role offers the chance to work in a fully-distributed team while contributing to meaningful projects that make a difference. With a supportive environment and opportunities for growth, you'll thrive in a culture that values curiosity and continuous improvement. If you're ready to take on challenges and lead by example, we invite you to be part of our exciting journey.

Benefits

Employee Stock-Option Plan

Paid Vacation/Holidays

Tools for Work (Computer, etc.)

Learning Opportunities from Industry Leaders

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of software engineering experience with a focus on product-oriented solutions.
• Demonstrated leadership abilities and a commitment to continuous learning.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop existing and new systems while collaborating with the Product team.
• Lead code reviews and guide engineers to optimize processes for rapid learning.

Skills

Software Engineering

Agile Methodologies

Problem Solving

Team Leadership

HTML & CSS

Analytical Skills

CI/CD Practices

Cloud Infrastructure

AI Utilization

Education

Bachelor's in Software Engineering

Tools

MySQL

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Kubernetes

Job description

Being a Tech Lead is probably 20% communication, 20% problem-solving, and 20% coaching / people / process. Is that how you operate? We're looking for collaborative, cross-functional, product-oriented problem-solvers (i.e., 'full-stack and more') to help us create dignified access to financial opportunities in Africa and beyond, by helping businesses to trust their customers and partners.

Akiba is a seed-stage startup in Identity / RegTech, seemingly right at the moment where we achieve Product-Market Fit. We just joined the Global RegTech 100! If we're right, we are about to start growing fast and building a LOT of great software. We've just launched the MVP of our Risk-Decisioning Platform 'AkibaOne', which combines Application Processing, Data-Sourcing, Identity-Verification, Risk-Scoring, and Low-Code Workflows and Decisioning. We've got a lot of work to do to go from MVP to v1, and then we add new products.

Our team is global and fully-distributed: as long as you can be online with us for 5-6 hours a day, and as long as you speak English with advanced fluency (because: communication), we don't care where you are. We get together for retreats someplace beautiful whenever we can. And if you'd like to join our Hybrid office setup in Johannesburg, you're very welcome.

Responsibilities

1. Architect and develop for our existing systems and new ones.
2. Collaborate hands-on with Product every single day to define products that add value for customers, and to help the CTO plan iterative agile delivery (Product and Tech are a single, integrated team here).
3. Lead collaborative code-reviews that guide and empower your team of engineers / developers, without bike-shedding on the small stuff or demanding total control.
4. Help your people to optimize their processes and mental-models for rapid learning and blameless problem-solving.
5. Design and code both front- and back-end in a clean and modular way.
6. Deploy scalable, reliable, and operable services to the cloud, teaching the team to ensure observability and monitoring as first-class concerns.
7. 'Shift-Left' on security and operability, building them in from the start.
8. Develop and publish internal and external APIs that other developers love to use, and architect our interactions with dozens of downstream data providers.
9. Guide the team toward test-driven development, starting with unit and API testing and collaborating with the QE who does our functional automation.
10. Help develop minimum-viable documentation to explain and share your solutions with the team, and help them to write (mostly) self-documenting code.
11. Help the CTO to create a great environment for our people, where they can learn and grow and develop the confidence that maybe they can be like you someday.

Requirements

1. Curiosity, kindness, persistence, and an analytical mind.
2. Minimum 3-5 years of experience in software engineering.
3. Demonstrated experience leading and organizing others, even if it wasn't reflected in your title; and the desire to lead through example, not coercion.
4. Experience with relational (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB).
5. Evidence of continuous growth and learning, with proof of having effectively and quickly adopted new technologies, because in reality: nobody already knows it all.
6. Product-orientation, more than a little HTML & CSS, and knowledge of the basic rules of creating effective human interfaces.
7. Hands-on experience shaping an agile team process (no certifications or strong dogma required), and ability to explain why / when it's helpful.
8. Passionate commitment to CI / CD and experience with effective enabling tools.
9. Basic operating familiarity with cloud infrastructure (some K8s chops would be great too, but not expected).
10. Use AI in your own work and have an opinion about how your team should use it.
11. Preferably: experience in a fast-moving, startup-style environment at least once (we do NOT operate like a big enterprise).
12. Nice-to-have: Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, Information Technology or related field, but we're big fans of self-taught engineers.

Compensation and Benefits

If you're looking to build a product that matters with a team that makes you want to show up each morning, that's Akiba. But full-disclosure: we're a seed-stage startup, which means that if you're looking for the highest-possible compensation, we're not (yet) the right place. Compensation is very likely to increase if we land Series A funding in approx. 9 months (or get profitable fast), but we don't have guarantees.

In the meantime, tell us what comp you would need in order to join us, and we'll do our best. We also provide a documented Employee Stock-Option Plan, paid vacation/holidays, and all the tools you'd need (computer, etc.) to do good work.

Also: we have a team of leaders from local and global businesses for you to learn from. Our team comes from McKinsey, TransUnion, and other great organizations. And your CTO is a hands-on Engineer who knows his first job is to set you up for success and to communicate what you need to the rest of the company, not to look over your shoulder while you code. ;-)