Head of Engineering - Digital Experience

Role Title-  Head of Engineering - Digital Experience

Reports to- Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Team Size- 4 squads · Around 20–30 engineers + QA chapter (at maturity)

Location- Nairobi, Kenya (HQ) Preferred - full-time on-site or hybrid

This is a founding leadership hire for the Digital Experience Engineering function. You will be the first Head of Engineering, Digital Experience at Watu, responsible for building and leading the engineering organisation that owns everything the customer touches: payments, the Android app, conversational experience and growth.

You will report directly to the CTO and be a peer to the Head of Engineering, Platform and the three Heads of Product. You will define how engineering works on the customer-facing layer, setting technical standards, building the squad model, hiring Tech Leads, and creating the conditions for fast, high-quality delivery.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You are expected to be close to the code, the architecture, and the engineers, not behind a layer of process. The culture we are building is one where Tech Leads are genuine 

You will lead four squads and a QA chapter. Each squad has a Product Owner (aligned to a Head of Product) and a Tech Lead who reports to you. The QA Chapter Lead is embedded in one of your squads but reports directly to you, driving QA strategy and standards across all five squads.

Squad 1 - Payments Engineering

Payment rails and integrations (MPESA, Airtel, and others), reconciliation, post-go-live ops, and the Payment API. The most business-critical squad in the function.

Squad 2 - Messaging Experience Engineering

SMS, WhatsApp, and FCM dispatch layer; conversational orchestration; in-house flow logic for loan notifications, payment via chat, and customer communications.

Squad 3 - Android Experience Engineering

The Watu Android app, BE API serving mobile, release process and QA strategy ownership. Device experience features.

Squad 4 - Growth & Loyalty Engineering

Loyalty and rewards engine, points, tiers and redemption logic, growth feature backend (referrals, campaigns), integration with Android app and payments.

Peers- Head of Infrastructure, DevOps & SRE · Head of Engineering, Platform · Head of IT · Heads of Product

Engineering leadership

• Set the technical direction for the customer experience engineering layer, architecture patterns, API design standards, code quality gates, and testing strategy.
• Build and manage a team of Tech Leads, hire them, develop them, hold them to a high bar. They are your primary lever for quality and velocity.
• Lead the QA Chapter model: work closely with the QA Chapter Lead to ensure consistent testing standards, automation coverage, and definition of done across all five squads.
• Own the release management process for CXE: coordinate cross-squad releases with your counterpart Head of Engineering, Platform, and own the CXE side of the Release Calendar.

Delivery and quality

• Drive delivery across five squads operating on Scrum or Kanban (your decision per squad), fast, predictable, and high quality.
• Work with existing dev outsourcing partners (when applicable) to define the long term strategy, nothing ships without Tech Lead sign-off. You are accountable for making this governance real.
• Enforce the engineering standards: GitHub for all code, GitHub Actions for CI/CD, mandatory PR reviews, coverage gates, OpenAPI documentation, ADRs, runbooks.
• Own the Definition of Done for your function. QA is embedded in every squad. not a bottleneck at the end of a sprint.

People and culture

• Build the CXE engineering culture: high ownership, direct communication, AI-native ways of working. Every engineer in your function uses AI/LLM tooling as a standard part of their workflow.
• Hire into your function, Tech Leads first, then engineers. You will define the hiring bar and conduct final interviews for senior hires.
• Work closely with three Heads of Product (Digital Experience, Onboarding & Operations), you own How and When; they own What. This partnership must be strong.

Essential

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years leading engineering teams of 15+ people across multiple squads or product areas.
• Track record of shipping customer-facing products at scale, payments, mobile apps, messaging, or growth engineering in fintech, e-commerce, or a similarly high-velocity environment.
• Strong technical depth in backend engineering (APIs, event-driven architecture, distributed systems) and enough mobile/frontend fluency to govern Android squads and set standards.
• Experience with partner or vendor governance, you have been in situations where external teams execute work that your team owns, and you have made that work.
• Proven ability to build and develop engineering managers and Tech Leads, not just manage them, but grow them into genuine technical authorities.
• Comfortable operating in markets with limited infrastructure, you understand the constraints of building for mobile-first, low-bandwidth, emerging market customers.
• Fluent in modern engineering practices: trunk-based development, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code thinking, security-first API design, test automation.

Strongly preferred

• Experience in fintech, particularly payments, lending, or digital financial services in Africa or LATAM.
• Hands-on experience with Android app development or governance of a mobile partner.
• Familiarity with conversational product engineering, WhatsApp Business API, SMS orchestration, or chatbot-adjacent product delivery.
• Experience operating in a squad-based engineering model (Spotify model or similar).
• Nairobi-based or willing to relocate, this role needs to be present in the market.

The kind of person we are looking for

• You push back when the product roadmap is unrealistic. You protect engineering quality without being obstructionist.
• You are direct. You give feedback clearly and early, to your engineers, to your peers, and upward.
• You think in systems. When something breaks, you fix the process, not just the incident.
• You are genuinely excited about AI-assisted engineering and you model that for your team.
• You have strong opinions about how good engineering teams work, and you are willing to defend them.

• A genuinely senior role, direct CTO report, peer to Heads of Product, founding member of a restructured engineering leadership team.
• A clean mandate. The engineering structure is being rebuilt from the ground up. You are the first hire into this function, you will shape it.
• Real scope: four squads, the core customer-facing product surface, and the authority to set the technical direction for all of it.
• A mission that matters. Our customers are real people financing motorcycles and phones that change their economic lives. Engineering quality directly affects millions of people.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and long-term incentive participation commensurate with a senior leadership role.

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

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse team that reflects the markets we serve. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to any status protected by applicable laws.

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