Senior Backend Engineer, Markets (Kenya)

About Tala

Tala is on a mission to unleash the economic power of the Global Majority – the 4 billion people overlooked by existing financial systems. With nearly half a billion dollars raised from equity and debt, we are serving millions of customers across three continents. Tala has been named by the Fortune Impact 20 list, CNBC’s Disruptor 50 five years in a row, CNBC’s World's Top Fintech Company, Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for eight years running, and Chief's The New Era of Leadership Award. We are expanding across product offerings, countries and crypto and are looking for people who have an entrepreneurial spirit and are passionate about our mission.

By creating a unique platform that enables lending and other financial services around the globe, people in emerging markets are able to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals with confidence. Currently, over nine million people across Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, and India have used Tala products. Due to our global team, we have a remote-first approach, and also have offices in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.

Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!

The Senior Backend Engineer builds and extends Tala’s backend architecture to support new country launches, new features, and fast growing user base. As a technologist and a leader, the Senior Backend Engineer pushes the team towards building a highly available, scalable, reliable, fault tolerant, and performant microservices platform. The Senior Backend Engineer follows and improves upon Tala’s engineering processes and standards while advancing Tala’s mission and business objectives. This is a technical leadership role within Tala’s technical track. You will report to the Backend Engineering Manager and collaborate cross-functionally with all Tala teams across the globe.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features as defined in the Product roadmap
• Review design documents, perform code reviews, and weigh in on implementation choices from other technical teams
• Collaborate and support with cross functional teams (Product, Data, Credit, and Business Development) to ship scalable software solutions
• Continually improve our codebase with clean and efficient code as well as solving problems using the most appropriate technology
• Contribute to complete migration of legacy codebase to microservices architecture
• Contribute to the testing infrastructure to increase code coverage for backend modules
• Advance monitoring and alerting capabilities of backend modules to allow proactive improvements to availability and response times 
• Technically lead and mentor a team of Backend Engineers to build/extend complex modules

Requirements

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience
• 5+ years coding in one or more of the following languages: Java, Scala, Kotlin
• Developed and launched large scale consumer applications with the backend on Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure) using microservices architecture paradigm
• Expert knowledge in architecture & system design
• Ability to provide technical leadership & mentorship
• Expert knowledge in REST API design and development for mobile/web use
• Expert proficiency in Agile development process
• Excellent ability to prioritize and communicate in a fast-paced environment
• Strong relational database experience (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or MS SQL)
• Strong non-relational database experience (Cassandra, Redshift, DynamoDB, HDFS)
• BS degree in Computer Science or related fields is a plus
• Demonstrated ability to interview candidates and evaluate technical skills

Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.