Software Architect

JOB DESCRIPTION: Software Architect

Company: Paga

Sector: Financial Services / FinTech

Position: Software Architect

Reports to: Lead Software Architect or Business Lead

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Experience: 12+ years enterprise software engineering experience

ABOUT PAGA

Paga is on a mission to enable one billion Africans and millions of SMEs to pay, preserve hard-earned income, participate in global trade, and purchase goods and services at home and abroad. We have built a multicurrency, cloud-based payments and financial services engine that leverages multiple business services built on the same best-in-class infrastructure to serve the ecosystem through three businesses - Paga Engine (Enterprise B2B - www.pagaengine.com); Paga (Consumer - www.Paga.com); and Doroki (SME Retail -www.doroki.com). Paga has three licenses with the Central Bank of Nigeria – mobile money, international remittance, and a microfinance bank. Paga is headquartered out of the United Kingdom and has operating entities in Nigeria, United States, and Ethiopia. Founded in 2009, Paga now serves millions of users and businesses across Africa and beyond.

Our purpose at Paga is to make it simple for 1 billion people to access and use money. We do that by delivering innovative financial services to the mass market across large, underserved markets.

At Paga we value above all else, Collaboration, Ownership, Results Orientation, Integrity and Innovation (CORII).

Product development activities at Paga fall within the Product Development group, which has distinct, full-stack (from a resource perspective) teams dedicated to different functional organization units in the company. For example, one of the functional teams in the Product Development team is the Agent Network Team which is responsible for development and delivery of products used by the large network of financial service delivery point (agents), across the countries where Paga exists. As a full-stack team, this team includes project management, product management, software and database engineering, quality assurance, and UI/UX/Product-Design resources. All teams execute product development using agile (Scrum) methodologies.

As a Software Architect at Paga, you will be responsible for the technical ownership of entire products, platforms or services within the scope of Paga’s business.  You will be responsible for designing and delivering systems that meet all the “ities” expected of enterprise-grade, financial systems (scalability, extensibility, security, etc.). You will be responsible for the technical oversight of one or more teams of Software and Database Engineers, working with you to realize your product vision.

KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL REQUIREMENTS 

• A degree in a related discipline 

• 10+ years of continuous experience working on enterprise software application development OR an advanced degree in a related discipline and at least 8 years of continuous experience working on enterprise software application development
• While we use an increasingly diverse software stack, the following technologies and skills are most heavily used and therefore important to have some experience in:
  • Java/J2EE and Spring and other Java frameworks
  • Kafka and other stream-processing platform
  • Micro-service architecture concepts
  • Vue.js and React front-end frameworks
  • Relational DB architecture and administration (MSSQL Server, PostgreSQL)
  • Kubernetes & Docker containerization frameworks
  • OLTP / Financial transaction processing concerns
  • Cloud deployment architecture and concerns (Azure, AWS)

To be an effective Software Architect at Paga you must:

• Be able to quickly grasp abstract concepts and translate them into appropriately abstract or detailed software design and implementation.

• Be comfortable taking ownership for broad and important areas of enterprise software implementation.

• Be a core business resource for both technical and non-technical decision making and triage and make themselves available to this effect.

• Possess mastery over all key aspects of the frameworks and tools within your scope and have strong business-knowledge in the business functional areas you support. Have multi-functional expertise across large areas of the platform/services.

• Be comfortable in making technical decisions based on the consideration of many potential futures in decision making without knowing exactly what the future is.

• Clearly understand and effectively weigh business trade-offs in decision-making.

• Be comfortable operating at both a high and deep-dive (low) levels of abstraction.

• Be able to multitask well and be comfortable juggling multiple product-development streams at once.

• Be comfortable with rapid change and be comfortable taking ownership to   deliver results in a high-pressure product development environment.

• Have a passion for quality and an ability and willingness to grow the ability of others in your team to meet those standards. Drive quality delivery across teams with which you work. 
  

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Vision & Strategic Leadership – Help develop and grow the technical vision for the Paga business and engage meaningfully in the strategic development of the overall business. Engage directly in business strategic leadership when it relates to product and technical decision making.

• Broad-scoped Technical Ownership – Independently oversees all software concerns for some of the major platform areas or services. Own end-to-end responsibility for a large portion of the software system including design and implementation and including a strong knowledge of complementary engineering aspects such as data management, dev-ops and infrastructure. Own responsibility for key delivery criteria such as performance, reliability, cost, security and maintainability for large portions of the system

• Technical Leadership -- Oversees key architectural concerns such as security, scalability/performance, reliability, maintainability, and modularity. Applies a platform-wide perspective to decision making around these concerns, including infrastructural, deployment, delivery and other technically relevant concerns.

• Process Leadership -- Drive development and improvement of technical product development processes in collaborations with product development management. 

• Code Quality Review -- Provide broad-scoped yet in-depth code review for technically complex and high-impact code changes.

• Partner Engagement – Working effectively with industry/ecosystem partners to accomplish product goals.  

Click on this link https://paga.bamboohr.com/jobs/ to apply for this job.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity inclusion. We do not discriminate on grounds of colour, race, nationality, religion, age, ethnic origin, disability, gender, marital status, or sexual orientation in our employment practices.