Pezesha, has created a holistic financial marketplace for MSMEs. By offering lending, financial education, and debt counselling to borrowers, plus a proprietary credit scoring system to vet MSMEs without a credit history, derisking lending to SMEs. Lower Risks bring commercial banks and capital providers onto Pezesha platform. As a collaborative structure, Pezesha is helping to tackle the $19 Billion financing gap for SMEs. Pezesha is led by a highly experienced and passionate local team with more than 10 years local and international experience in fin-tech, management of growth and technology companies, and unparalleled local market knowledge and reach.

Summary of the role:

• We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to develop the technical strategy and ensure implementation to make the company’s technical vision a reality. Pezesha is first a tech infrastructure business hence the foundation of our tech is the pillar of our success in the lending space. He/She will work very closely with the CEO and Technical Lead among other leads in execution of the tech roadmap and tech strategy in line with the business goals while defining prioritization on a weekly or quarterly level. At the same time the Engineering Manager will be required to drive performance, efficiency and effectiveness of engineering teams to ensure scale of the company operations from a technical perspective.

Primary responsibilities:

• Managing and leading the entire product and projects methodology cycle from design, implementation, support, documentation, maintenance to production.
• Leading the design and implementation of our APIs with external parties systems to ensure scalability, Security and Reliability
• Double up as an architect Lead providing architectural design, guidance, governance, recommendation and signoff for as-is vs target cloud architectures of applications.
• Identifying and hiring tech talent including ensuring tech talent retention strategies while strengthening the tech culture in the company. In addition, they use their soft skills to keep development and engineering teams motivated.
• Ensure partners SLAs are met and stakeholder accountability
• Assist in strategic planning and requirements analysis for internal and external stakeholders
• Lead and guide in tech best practices and standards in our tech stack and documentation
• Conduct frequent code reviews, audit and product/APIs documentation
• Designing and scaling the tech and data products/strategy architecture including credit scoring and server system architecture
• Ensuring systems security and confidentiality measures are enhanced
• Research and provide recommendations on tech tools including efficient and scalable development of features, products and new roll outs within Kenya and other countries
• Building quality assurance and data protection processes, ensuring all technology practices adhere to regulatory standards
• Mentoring the entire tech team to grow as per their needs
• Support structures and advice where needed to ensure creativity, innovation throughout the entire organization.

The successful candidate needs to have the following experience;

• Degree in a relevant technical field or Google certifications will be a bonus
• At least 7+ years of experience with Kubernetes, Docker and/or cloud deployment technologies- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
• 7+ years’ experience of working on distributed systems
• You speak languages like PHP, Java, Python or Go is good to have
• Excellent knowledge of Cloud Technology and Microservices
• Knowledge of Linux software packaging, distribution, and configuration
• Strong organizational and time-management abilities
• Experience with container networking on Docker.
• Experience with application deployment by using CI/CD.
• Experience with monitoring and alerting tools
• Experience in cyber security
• At least 5+ years of experience with SQL
• Results-driven by nature, a flawless executor with an entrepreneurial spirit.
• Have a proven understanding of best engineering practices for the full software development life cycle (SDLC), including coding standards, code review, source control, build, test, deploy, and operations
• An effective leader and team-player who knows how to hire and manage the right talent to scale the Engineering team
• Demonstrated success in delivering high-quality technology products/services in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to prioritize well, communicate clearly and understands how to drive a high level of focus and excellence with a strong, talented, opinionated team
• Sound business judgment, ability to set clear vision and goals and drive the organization in delivering to those goals
• Proven track record building and leading high performing tech teams.