Tech Lead - Payments Engineering

Tech Lead - Payments Engineering

     

About Watu

Watu is a fintech company operating across Africa and Latin America, providing device financing and financial services to customers historically excluded from the formal financial system. We finance motorcycles, smartphones and other productive assets through a technology-first, data-driven approach - enabling customers to own income-generating assets and build credit histories.

 

Our platform supports millions of customer journeys across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and beyond, with continued expansion into LATAM.

The Tech Lead Role at Watu

Tech Lead is one of the most important individual roles in the engineering organization. You are the technical authority for your squad - you own the architecture, set the quality bar, govern external partners when applicable, and are the primary escalation point for every engineering decision in your domain.

 

This role carries light people management alongside deep technical ownership. You will have 3-5 direct reports (Backend Engineers, Frontend/Mobile Engineer, QA Engineer). You are responsible for their day-to-day unblocking, their technical growth, and honest feedback on their work. Formal performance reviews and hiring decisions sit with the Head of Engineering - but in practice, your view of each engineer in your squad is the most important input into those decisions. Do not let the word "light" mislead you: if an engineer in your squad is struggling, that is your problem to solve.

 

You are a peer of the Product Owner, not a subordinate. Product owns What. You own How and When. Sprint commitments are signed off by both of you together. If the roadmap is technically unrealistic, your job is to say so early and clearly.

Squad: Payments Engineering

Quick facts for this squad

• Governance: No external partner governance - internal only. All payment provider integrations are owned by this squad.
• Primary tech focus: Java backend · Payment rails · MPESA · Airtel Money · Reconciliation Tools · Payment API

Domain responsibilities

• Own all PSP integrations using the payment rails architecture provided by the Core Platform team, the integration layer for all payment providers (MPESA, Airtel, and others)
• Own the Payment API consumed by other squads and applications. API versioning, backward compatibility, and security are your responsibility.
• Own payment operational tools (reconciliation and others) - the technical logic that ensures payment records match across Watu systems and external payment provider records.
• Lead technical onboarding of new payment providers - integration design, testing strategy, and production readiness are owned by this squad.
• Ensure that relevant events and metrics are available for observability & monitoring of all PSP integrations
• This is one of the most business-critical squads. Payments downtime has an immediate revenue impact. Your production reliability standards must reflect that.

Domain-specific requirements (in addition to base JD)

• Hands-on experience integrating mobile money APIs (MPESA, Airtel Money, or equivalent) in production at scale.
• Understanding of payment reconciliation systems - double-entry accounting logic, discrepancy detection, and financial audit trails.
• Familiarity with PCI-DSS or equivalent payment security standards, even in an integration or middleware context.
• Experience designing payment abstraction layers that support multiple providers behind a unified internal API.
• Fintech or payments engineering background in emerging countries is a strong differentiator.

What You Will Own

Architecture & technical direction

• Own the technical architecture for your squad's domain - system design, API contracts, data models, integration patterns, and the Architectural Decision Records that document why.
• Enforce the Watu engineering standards within your squad: GitHub for all code, mandatory PR review, coverage gates, OpenAPI documentation, runbooks, and secrets management.
• Be the squad's representative to the Platform General Architecture - escalate cross-squad concerns, contribute to shared standards, and ensure your squad's patterns align with the broader platform direction.

Delivery & quality

• Review and approve all pull requests for your squad. Not as a bottleneck, but as the quality gate. Your name is on everything that ships.
• Define and maintain the squad's Definition of Done. Work with the embedded QA engineer to ensure quality is built in, not bolted on.
• Own the squad's release process. Nothing ships without your sign-off - including work from external partners where applicable.
• Drive sprint planning with the Product Owner - translate user stories into technical tasks, surface dependencies, flag risks early.

People management (light but real)

• You have 4-6 direct reports: typically 1–2 Backend Engineers, 1–2 Frontend/Mobile Engineers, and 1-2 QA Engineers. They report to you for day-to-day work; the QA Chapter Lead reports to the Head of Engineering for standards but to you operationally.
• Unblock engineers actively - pair on hard problems, review designs before they build, and create an environment where asking for help is normal and fast.
• Give direct, timely feedback to your direct reports. Engineer growth happens through clear, specific feedback delivered close to the moment - not through annual cycles. You are the primary person responsible for the development of the engineers in your squad.
• Your input into performance reviews and hiring decisions carries significant weight - the Head of Engineering will lean heavily on your assessment of each engineer in your squad.
• Model AI-native engineering. Every engineer in your squad is expected to use AI/LLM tools actively. You set the tone for what that looks like in practice.

Who You Are

Essential

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years where you were the de facto technical authority for a significant product area or team.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, event-driven architecture, API design, database design, and testing strategy.
• Proven ability to review and reason about code across the full stack of your domain - you can give a meaningful review on any PR your squad raises.
• Experience in an Agile/Scrum or Kanban environment where you drove sprint ceremonies, backlog refinement, and delivery alongside a Product Owner.
• Clear, direct communicator - with engineers, with Product, and upward to the Head of Engineering.

Strongly preferred

• Experience in fintech, payments, or digital financial services in Africa or LATAM.
• Experience governing external engineering partners or SaaS vendor integrations.
• Hands-on experience with Java backend development (our primary backend language).
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture, Kafka or equivalent message brokers.

Engineering standards you are expected to uphold

• All code in GitHub - mandatory peer review, unified branching strategy, green CI before merge.
• APIs documented with OpenAPI/Swagger; Architecture Decision Records for significant decisions.
• No secrets in code - AWS Secrets Manager or Vault. OWASP Top 10 awareness is a baseline expectation.
• AI/LLM tooling used actively in your daily workflow - code generation, test writing, documentation, debugging.

This role is NOT right for you if

• You want to be shielded from difficult technical decisions by a more senior architect above you. There isn't one at this level.
• You want to move away from technical work. You will have several direct reports and real people management responsibilities - but you will also be the most technical person in the squad. If the goal is to stop writing code and reviewing architecture, this is the wrong step.
• You prefer to work independently and find code review and pair programming friction rather than value.

How to Apply

Send your CV and a brief note on why this role to the Watu talent team. We run a structured process: an initial conversation with the relevant Head of Engineering, a technical interview, and a final conversation with the wider leadership team. We move quickly for the right candidate.

 

We are an equal opportunity employer and actively work to build a team that reflects the diversity of the markets we serve.
 

All personal information provided will be processed in accordance with applicable data protection laws and regulations and used solely for recruitment and selection purposes. 

 

Watu  ·  Technology Organization  ·  Tech Lead