Lead Software Engineer

Senior Full-Stack Engineer & Engineering Lead - Remote -South Africa

About the Company

South African fintech building the future of pre-payment and variable recurring payments (VRP). Our platform powers Digital Lay-By, Save-Now-Buy-Later (Boost Rewards), Payment Plans, Smart Subscriptions, Stokvels, Pre-Orders, and more—enabling retailers to serve millions of previously underserved, cash-preferred consumers. We partner with major enterprise retailers, ecommerce platforms, and banking institutions to deliver seamless installment-based purchasing across in-store Android terminals and ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento). As a VC-backed, rapidly scaling payments company, we are now expanding our engineering leadership to accelerate product delivery, strengthen our architecture, and improve our dev team's performance.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Full-Stack Engineer who is not only a world-class developer, but also a commanding technical leader—someone who can take charge of an engineering team of six, drive sprint execution, and set the standard for code quality and delivery excellence. This role requires someone with a proven ability to take on hard, complex challenges and push through—often reflected in people who excel in endurance activities, long-term commitments, and completing difficult things. You will serve as the engineering “general”: leading from the front, bringing discipline, structure, and clarity into our development organisation while still being hands-on in the code. This is a fully remote role, working with a distributed team serving enterprise clients and large-scale fintech environments.

Responsibilities

• Engineering Leadership

• Lead a team of 6 developers across backend, frontend, and full-stack functions.

• Set and manage sprint goals, velocity expectations, deliverables, and timelines.

• Run daily standups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and technical grooming sessions.

• Establish engineering discipline, accountability, and strong execution standards.

• Provide mentorship, code reviews, and performance oversight to elevate the entire team.

• Collaborate with the CTO on architecture, scalability, and long-term technical strategy.

• Technical Ownership

• Take end-to-end responsibility for major features, system improvements, and releases.

• Architect and build reliable, scalable, secure systems in a fintech/payments environment.

• Ensure high-quality code through review processes, testing, and documentation.

• Solve complex technical challenges with an ownership-driven mindset.

• Improve system performance, reliability, and observability across all components.

• Cross-Team Collaboration

• Work closely with Product, QA, Operations, and Support teams to ensure alignment.

• Translate business requirements into well-scoped technical work.

• Act as the technical authority in merchant integrations, payments architecture, and VRP flows.

• Communicate clearly and confidently with leadership and non-technical stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience as a Full-Stack Engineer.

Required Skills

• Expert backend development in Node.js (Express/Nest or similar frameworks).
• Deep proficiency in Vue.js (Vue 2 & Vue 3).
• Strong database experience (MySQL/PostgreSQL).
• Experience with cloud-hosted architectures (AWS, GCP, or similar).
• Payment systems, fintech, or high-scale transactional platforms (advantageous).
• REST APIs, microservices design, and secure system architecture.
• CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality enforcement.
• Strong familiarity with Atlassian Suite (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket).

Preferred Skills

• Demonstrates strong leadership, discipline, and accountability.
• Has the ability to lead people through difficult cycles, tough deadlines, and rapid change.
• Has a history of push-through grit (e.g., endurance sports, long-distance running, cycling, Ironman, or any evidence of sustained commitment and perseverance).
• Communicates with clarity, directness, and confidence.
• Sets high standards and leads by example.
• Thrives in a fast-moving startup environment with real urgency.
• Can make tough decisions and manage underperformance when required.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace.