Senior Backend Engineer Job HFCB, Nairobi, Kenya

Job description

About the Role

The Senior Backend Engineer is responsible for driving the end-to-end strategy, development, and delivery of high-performance, scalable backend services across the Group. The role holder will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining backend services and integrations that power resilient automation solutions.

While the role is backend-heavy, the engineer is expected to be a versatile “T-Shaped” professional capable of doubling up as a Full Stack Engineer to support frontend feature integration and end-to-end prototyping when required. You will lead and mentor junior engineers while championing a high-performance, outcome-driven culture focused on technical excellence and commercial impact.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Development & Full Stack Versatility

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs that power enterprise platforms.
• Write clean, efficient, and secure code for various backend components, services, and integrations.
• Lead the evolution of existing service applications and ensure seamless integration with internal and external partner ecosystems.
• Double up as a Full Stack Engineer when needed, providing support for frontend feature integration and end-to-end service prototyping.
• Architect and manage complex messaging/streaming systems using Kafka and RabbitMQ to ensure system fault tolerance and resilience.

DevSecOps & Engineering Excellence

• Champion engineering best practices, including DevSecOps and CI/CD, to ensure secure and frequent delivery.
• Work closely with the DevOps team to automate deployment pipelines, enhance infrastructure-as-code, and improve system reliability.
• Participate in code inspection, testing, and continuous refactoring efforts to maintain enterprise-grade quality.
• Ensure application performance, monitoring, and fault tolerance for all digital solutions.

Agile Delivery & Technical Leadership

• Drive Agile delivery across squads, ensuring timely and high-quality releases aligned to business outcomes.
• Provide clear technical direction, architectural guidance, and prioritization across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Lead collaboration across business, technology, risk, and compliance stakeholders to ensure seamless execution from ideation to go-live.
• Conduct rigorous code reviews and provide mentorship to develop strong technical and commercial capabilities within the team.

Commercialization & Product Innovation

• Own the technical success of channel products, ensuring they are built for adoption, usage, and revenue generation.
• Work closely with Product Owners and Commercial Leads to leverage data and analytics for optimizing customer journeys.
• Ensure solutions address real customer pain points through human-centered design and Lean Startup principles.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, or a related field (Master’s degree preferred).
• Professional training or certification in Agile, Product Development, or relevant backend technologies would be an added advantage.
• 10+ years’ experience in banking, fintech, or digital financial services.

Competencies

• Backend Mastery: Deep expertise in building and maintaining highly scalable, resilient backend services and integrations.
• Full Stack Awareness: Demonstrated ability to work across the full stack, including frontend technologies and API integration patterns.
• Systems & Architecture: Solid experience with microservices architecture, service orchestration, and event-driven systems (Kafka/RabbitMQ).
• Engineering Tools: Proficiency in Java/Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure). Understanding in .Net Core is a plus.
• Version Control: Proficient understanding of version control using Git.
• DevOps & Quality: Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevSecOps practices, and automated testing tools (Jenkins, SonarQube, etc.).
• Leadership: Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence technical decisions at a senior leadership level.

How to Apply

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