Join our growing People team! We're hiring a Lead People Partner to own the people agenda for our Technology organisation as M-KOPA scales the infrastructure behind financial inclusion for everyday earners across Africa.
The Impact 🌍
Your leadership will directly shape how we build, retain and grow the engineering talent powering our mission. We've now reached 10 million customers and unlocked $2+ billion in credit across five African markets. This role sits right at the centre of the machine that makes that growth possible.
The Opportunity
💚 Mission-driven HR: Partner directly with our CTO and their leadership team across Engineering, Data, Analytics, IT and Security — work that translates straight into digital and financial access for everyday earners
🏆 Global recognition: Join a company named by TIME 100 as one of the world's most influential, and by the Financial Times as Africa's fastest-growing company for 5 consecutive years (2022–2026)
🚀 Scale challenges: Design the org structure for a globally distributed, senior engineering population spread across Africa, Europe and the UK — scaling and reshaping at the same time
🌱 Environmental impact: Work for a carbon-negative company that has displaced over 2 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions
What You'll Do
You'll act as trusted advisor to our engineering, data and platform leaders, aligning people strategy to roadmap execution and organisational evolution. You'll hold overall accountability for people partnering across the full Technology and Product organisation, with one Senior People Partner reporting to you covering Product and adjacent functions. Your own focus is Engineering: a globally distributed, senior population where genuine fluency in how engineering organisations are built, levelled and retained matters far more than adjacency to them.
Day to day, you'll:
Lead org design: workforce planning, levelling and team transformation in a function scaling and reshaping simultaneously
Own Engineering and Product end to end: full accountability for people partnering across both, with a Senior People Partner reporting to you
Lead and grow a partner: coach, develop and set direction for your direct report, building the partnering standard for the whole technology portfolio
Use people analytics to inform action: partner with Centres of Excellence to turn data into decisions on capability, attrition and cost
Drive distributed team effectiveness: optimise performance, engagement and team dynamics in a fast-paced, asynchronous, multi-country environment
Handle complex employee relations: own the senior and sensitive end of the ER caseload for your portfolio
Your Environment 💻
Reporting line: People Director, alongside a peer group of senior partners covering our operating markets
Client group: CTO and their leadership team across Engineering, Data, Analytics, IT and Security, plus accountability for Product via your direct report
Team: one Senior People Partner reporting to you
Population: globally distributed, senior engineering talent, majority based across Africa, Europe and the UK
Our Approach 🚀
We scale and reshape our engineering function at the same time, so org design here is a live, ongoing discipline, not a one-off project
We hold both a portfolio and a team in this role, which is unusual even within our own People function
We lean on Centres of Excellence for data and specialist ER support, freeing you to focus on judgement and stakeholder relationships
We expect direct engagement with C-level leaders, with genuine autonomy attached
What You Need
We're looking for someone who has partnered closely with engineering, data or platform leadership in a scaling technology or fintech business, and genuinely understands how those functions work.
Required Experience:
Senior HR experience partnering with engineering organisations in a scaling technology or fintech business
Experience leading or formally coaching HR business partners, with the ability to raise the standard of someone else's work
Proven org design depth: you've led real structural change (levelling, spans and layers, function redesign), not just supported it
Strategic and operational range: equally comfortable designing long-term org strategy and working at team level
Remote and global savvy: experience supporting cross-cultural teams across multiple regions
Strong business acumen: able to translate between people priorities and business outcomes at leadership level
Comfortable operating with autonomy at C-level
Employee relations judgement across more than one jurisdiction, knowing when to own it and when to bring in specialists (UK/Europe employment law exposure is useful given where much of the engineering population sits, but not essential — we have an ER Centre of Excellence for statutory depth)
Location & Benefits
Fully Remote role - Can be Based in the UK, Nigeria or specific locations across Europe
Reports to the People Director
Professional development and coaching partnerships
Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements
Well-being support and career growth opportunities
Direct exposure to our CTO and CPO, with real influence over leadership-level people decisions
Our Mission 🌍
We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model, driving greater inclusion of women, youth and low-income communities.
Our Impact 💚
Included 🔓: 10 million customers, $2+ billion in credit unlocked since 2010
Prosperous 💰: 70% of customers use their M-KOPA product for income generation, 35,000 livelihoods created for sales agents
Green 🌱: over 2.1 million tonnes of CO₂ avoided, with 127,700 circular economy products sold since 2010
Ready to shape the people strategy behind a technology function scaling financial inclusion for millions? Apply today!
Why M-KOPA?At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.
Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at m-kopa.com.
Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026), named on CNBC's World’s Top Fintech Companies 2025 & 2026 and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we've served over 10 million customers, unlocking $2 billion in cumulative credit for the everyday earners across Africa, in addition to over 10,000 e-bikes financed in Kenya.
Important Notice
M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice. M-KOPA shall ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as internships or apprenticeships.
M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.
Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the advertised closing date.
If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process, these include; criminal records, identification verification, academic qualifications, employment dates and employer references.
Skills Required
- Senior HR experience partnering with engineering organizations in a scaling technology or fintech business
- Experience leading or formally coaching HR business partners
- Proven organizational design experience, including leveling, spans and layers, and function redesign
- Strategic and operational HR experience
- Experience supporting remote, cross-cultural teams across multiple regions
- Strong business acumen and ability to connect people priorities with business outcomes
- Ability to operate autonomously with C-level leaders
- Employee relations judgment across multiple jurisdictions
- UK or European employment law exposure
What We Do
M-KOPA is a UK-headquartered emerging market fintech that provides affordable smartphones and digital financial services. With operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, the company has extended over $1.5 billion in credit to more than 5 million customers. Using an innovative financing model based on daily repayments, M-KOPA provides affordable smartphones embedded with financial services that fit with the cash flow of millions of underserved individuals who earn their income on a daily basis. By leveraging rich payments data and proprietary AI-driven analytics, M-KOPA builds a credit record for each customer which forms the foundation for a long-term financial relationship for digital loans, affordable data subscriptions and insurance. The company employs over 3,000 staff and 30,000 sales agents across its African markets. M-KOPA has been recognised by the Financial Times as one of Africa’s Fastest Growing Companies for the past 3 years, and by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Companies globally for the past 2 years.
