Tech Lead (Backend)

About Us

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 feedback on product specs and mocks.
• Participate in the full development cycle: design, development, QA, experimentation, analysis, launch, and monitoring.

Your Profile

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including production systems at scale.

3+ years leading a team of engineers with direct people management (1:1s, feedback, growth plans ; not just tech lead coordination).

• Strong experience with Typescript / Node.js, Python, Go, or similar backend languages.
• Solid grasp of modern software engineering practices: version control (Git), CI/CD, code reviews, automated testing, monitoring, etc.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Strong understanding of relational and non-relational databases. Experience with PostgreSQL is a plus.
• Fluent in English (written and spoken), French is a plus.
• When faced with a tricky bug or an unfamiliar system, know how to unblock yourself, whether by digging deeper, asking teammates for help, or using tools like AI.
• Care deeply about users - you build with the user's real needs in mind, advocating for simplicity and value in technical decisions.
• You think about systems and outcomes looking beyond individual tasks to understand system-wide impact on performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Stays current with new tools and practices.
• Experience in designing and implementing distributed systems that scale for millions of customers.
• Entrepreneurial spirit. You are self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments.
• The capacity to communicate and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Sound knowledge of standard software engineering methodology, e.g. unit testing, code reviews, design documentation, continuous integration, and delivery.

Nice to Have

• Experience working with event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Prior experience in a startup or hyper-growth environment
• Familiarity with mobile backend (API performance, offline-first, rate limiting)
• Contributions to open-source projects or engineering blogs

Some projects the team has been working on:

• Enabling users to save money and earn interest directly through the Djamo app.
• Giving users the ability to invest in the stock market.
• Providing in-app access to credit.
• Offering an instant, fee-free current account.

The advantages of working at Djamo

• A stimulating work environment
• The value of participating in the evolution of a startup that aims to rapidly expand throughout French-speaking Africa.
• A collaborative work environment with a strong team spirit
• A culture of continuous employee development

We will consider all applications on the same basis. Djamo is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Type of contract

Contractor via DEEL - for non-residents of Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal

CDD / CDI - for residents of Sénégal

Desired start date

ASAP

Sector of activity

Mobile Financial Services