Remote Backend Engineering Lead— FinTech Architecture Growth, Johannesburg

Join our growing FinTech Engineering team! We're recruiting a Backend Engineering Team Lead to spearhead the delivery of our new loan origination architecture, compliance systems, and pricing platform. This infrastructure 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.

The Opportunity

Mission-driven engineering: Your daily work enables affordable smartphones, digital loans, and financial services for Africa's Every Day Earners.

Global recognition: Join a FinTech company named by TIME 100 and recognized by the Financial Times.

Scale that matters: Architect systems that process over 2 million payments daily across five markets and build 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 across both greenfield and legacy projects, owning the full software lifecycle from design to decommissioning.

You will set architectural direction, partner closely with Product Managers on roadmap planning, 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: Azure

Architecture: Event-driven systems and microservice development (Service Bus)

Engineering culture: DevOps, infrastructure as code, observability, automated testing, 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, prioritising, delivering together.

What You Need We're looking for an experienced backend engineering leader who brings technical depth and a passion for growing people.

Required Experience

Hands‑on background in C#/.NET backend development

Proven experience with Azure cloud services

Solid understanding of event-driven architecture and microservice development (Service Bus, RabbitMQ, Kafka)

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 will lead a team of three engineers– two senior and one mid-level. The team is just under a year old, with a dedicated Product Manager as your counterpart.

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, driving greater inclusion of women, youth, and low-income communities.

Our Impact

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

Ready to build the systems that create real‑world financial inclusion while leading a talented team of engineers? Apply now.

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, prioritise well-being, and embrace flexibility.

Visit

m-kopa.com

to explore more.

Equal Opportunity Employer 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. M‑KOPA shall ensure that its employees are of legal working age and comply with local laws regarding youth employment or student work. M‑KOPA does not collect or charge any money as a pre‑employment or post‑employment requirement.

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