Tech Lead (Backend)

In November 2020, we introduced a groundbreaking financial super app in Côte d'Ivoire, offering a comprehensive suite of services encompassing online and offline payments, peer-to-peer transactions, fund transfers, as well as savings and budgeting tools.

As of today, we have empowered thousands of users to seamlessly perform these financial activities, and our rapid growth continues unabated. Our overarching objective is to forge the next generation of digital financial solutions in Francophone Africa, a region where fewer than 25% of the population currently has access to traditional banking services.

The financial landscape of this region is undergoing a profound transformation, with millions of individuals shifting from basic financial transactions (mobile money) to more sophisticated financial management. Djamo is uniquely positioned to emerge as the premier choice for meeting these evolving financial needs.

We are proud to have garnered support from world-renowned investors, including Y Combinator, Partech, Kima, and Norskeen, which underscores our potential and commitment to reshaping the financial services landscape in Africa.

To support the launch and growth of our activities in Djamo Entities, we are looking for a Tech Lead.

About the role

As our new Tech Lead reporting to our Head of Engineering, you will oversee a team of engineers, making architectural and design decisions, guiding team members in technical matters, and supervising system modifications.

As a Leader, you will mentor team members, delegate tasks, give and receive feedback, evaluate risks, and resolve conflicts.

As a Developer, you will play a key role in designing, developing, and scaling backend systems that power critical financial services for users across Francophone Africa. You'll be expected to bring deep technical expertise, take ownership of complex system design challenges, and continuously raise the bar on code quality and system performance.

You will work closely with cross-functional teams, including product, design, and frontend engineering, to build performant, secure, and reliable services. You'll also lead efforts to optimize legacy systems, implement best practices, and drive adoption of new technologies that align with Djamo's ambitious growth goals.

Your Role

Reporting to the Head of Engineering, Your Key Responsibilities will include:

Lead a cross-functional team (70% of your time)

Own the delivery and technical direction of a product squad (engineers, designer, PM).

Run the team: weekly 1:1s, regular feedback, career growth conversations, sprint coordination.

Break down projects into well-scoped work, manage dependencies, and keep the team shipping.

Partner closely with Product and Design to shape what gets built, not just how.

Raise the engineering bar across the org (20%)

Architect, build, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable backend systems and services.

Be a technical sounding board for other tech leads and engineers.

Help first-time managers develop their leadership skills ; give them patterns, not just advice.

Drive improvements to engineering practices: code review quality, testing strategy, CI/CD, design docs.

Contribute to architectural decisions that affect multiple teams.

Own the delivery and quality of backend features from concept to production.

Stay technical (30% overlap with above)

Write code. Review code. You're in the codebase, not above it.

Lead by example on design quality, system thinking, and pragmatic trade-offs.

Own technical decisions for your squad. Escalate the right ones, decide the rest.

Build reusable code and libraries for future use.

Bring a strong perspective that inspires new ideas and motivates engineers to develop simple solutions to sophisticated problems.

Foster strong cross-function collaboration with Frontend, Product, and Support to develop world-class products. You'll be reviewing code and design docs, and giving feedba...