Founding Engineer (Location Agnostic) at MFS Africa

Description

MFS Africa is the leading digital payments hub in Africa, enabling low-cost payments across the continent. The company works in close partnership with mobile network operators and financial institutions to bring simple and relevant payment services to unbanked people. MFS Africa connects over 320 million mobile money users across sub-Saharan Africa through its platform – the MFS Hub. As a B2B company, we enable cross-border payment for mobile money operators, banks, money transfer operators, large corporate and a growing number of SMEs. Our recent partnership with Visa will soon allow us to connect the MFS Hub to Visa.net, effectively connecting African consumers and businesses to the global digital economy. As a technology fintech company, we strive to automate everything we do and run world-class operations. Our locations include: Port-Louis, Accra, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kampala and London. We are regulated by the FSC in Mauritius, BoG in Ghana, BoT in Tanzania, and FCA in the UK.

The Role

Within MFS Africa, the Emerging Enterprise team is charged with bringing digital payment tools to SMEs across the continent. The team operates as a “start-up within a start-up,” innovating and delivering quickly to serve this vast and dynamic market.

Our product is Beyonic, a world-class business payments suite developed by a company of the same name, which was acquired and fully integrated into MFS Africa in 2020.

As Founding Engineer for the Emerging Enterprise team, you will be responsible for building a mobile web interface and mobile Android app to bring the Beyonic business payments suite to a wide audience of SMEs across Africa. You will also build and lead the team to deliver this.

You will spearhead the technical vision and execution, and bring a lean, keen, mean start-up energy to the team. The plus side that is a rare reality, is that we are working with post-start-up resources and therefore the usual start-up woes and concerns of security, runway and fund-raising pressure will not be an added concern.

You will be responsible for putting in place some of the key initial hires on the technical team. However, this is not a primarily people-management role in the traditional sense e.g. HR administrative functions as there are existing operational structures to support this. Your key focus will be translating the overall business vision of our Beyonic SaaS into a stellar, scalable and world class product.

This will be across our App, portal & API suites and you will be leading the overall vision, culture and technical excellence within the team. This requires a strategic, dynamic, and progressive mindset that will take our initial product from MVP to millions of SMEs over the next few years.

Success in this role will require creative thinking and analytic rigour, along with a willingness to experiment and iterate. The right candidate will find this role to be an exciting opportunity to build something new and bold, while being supported by a robust, mature company.

The position will report to the MD: Emerging Enterprise and is location agnostic; however, a candidate’s home time zone will be relevant to success in the role (GMT -1 to +3 preferred).

The duties and responsibilities of the role will be as follows:

• Collaborate with software developers, business analysts, software architects and scrum masters to plan, design, develop, test, and maintain development projects, as per Agile process

• Assist in the collection and documentation of user requirements, development of user stories, estimates and work plans

• Maintain high standards of software quality within the team by establishing good practices and habits

• Participate in code and peer-reviews of solution designs and related code

• Design, develop, and unit test applications in accordance with established standards

• Package and support deployment of releases to pre-production and test environments

• Develop, refine, and fine-tune applications

• Analyze and resolve technical and application problems

• Ensure the software team delivers successful projects on time and within budget

• Provide technical leadership and direction to the team

• Develop the team through coaching, mentorship and by identifying technical training needs

• Develop the technical design documents, ensure proper handover of the technical design to developers(team) to code as per design

• Perform a QA review of applications/products built for the provided design

• Identify gaps in existing systems and suggest solutions for the identified gaps

• Quick learning of current market frameworks and tools to introduce in projects

Requirements

Skills

Tech Stack :

• Java/Node/Python/Type script

• AngularJS/React/Vue/Flutter

• IOS/Android

• REST/SOAP Web services

• Relational databases (Mysql/Mongo/Postgres/SQLServer

• Cloud technologies (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Other Skills and Competencies -

• Excellent analytical skills and the ability to develop processes and methodologies

• Expert knowledge of at least two of the following: AngularJS, React, Vue, Flutter

• Expert knowledge of at least two of the following: Java, Node, Python, Type script

• Advanced knowledge of building cross-platform native (iOS and Android) and web applications

• Advanced knowledge of Software Architecture and design patterns (SOLID, GoF)

• Advanced understanding of reactive and functional programming

• Skilled at modelling and orchestrating state through a server & database

• Advanced knowledge in one or more database technologies: Mysql, Mongo, Postgres, SQLServer

• Familiarity with RESTful APIs to connect mobile applications with back-end services

• Demonstrable capability to use OS frameworks for multi-threading, data persistence, and adapting user interface across multiple screen sizes

• Advanced knowledge in one or more cloud technologies: AWS, Azure, GCP

• Advanced understanding of web application best practices, architecture, testing

• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum concepts and experience working in an Agile environment

• Excellent communication skills to interface with product owners, stakeholders, and team members

Qualifications and experience

• Bachelor degree, preferably in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or related IT discipline; or equivalent experience

• Experience working in an Agile environment

• Minimum of 6+ years of experience in developing complex web and mobile applications

• Minimum of 3+ years of experience in a technical leadership role including architecting end-to-end mobile applications

Benefits

• We have a very diverse work environment with over 28+ nationalities represented and continually strive to build a culture of caring and execution

• We operate a flexible remote working policy

• We offer a competitive salary package and bonuses

• We prioritize the overall well being of our staff through various initiatives aimed at ensuring they reach their full potential in a supportive environment

• We solve relevant problems for Africa and the world in hope of continuing to make an impact on the millions, if not billions, of users who also believe in what we do

• We work at the very cutting edge of fin-tech in Africa