Head of Engineering (Remote) at Okra

Okra - Our mission is to digitize financial services. We are building the tools and services that will enable developers launch, optimize, & scale financial platforms and services. Our thesis is simply the fact that - financial innovation cannot exist without an Open Finance infrastructure. Essentially, the growth of the African Fintech industry is intrinsically tied to the success of an infrastructure like Okra.

Okra powers the tools that millions of people rely on to plan and manage their finances today. We are proudly working with hundreds of companies like Interswitch and D-local, and many of the largest financial institutions to make it easy for people to securely connect their accounts to the apps and services they choose. Okra’s network covers over 100 banks and financial institutions across Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Head of Engineering

Location: Remote

The Role

• It’s an amazing time to join Okra. We are looking for a seasoned leader to take our engineering organization to the next level.
• As the Head of Engineering, you’ll be responsible for driving excellent technical judgment and decision making that correctly anticipate future scalability and reliability challenges across a global engineering team consisting of our core infrastructure, data infrastructure, core services, core product, customer engineering, cloud infrastructure and QA teams.
• This highly strategic role will continually assess the needs of customers, and identify opportunities to develop world-class product development that enable greater personalisation of financial services.
• If you are a candidate who has the vision of what could be, who has the ability to cultivate relationships, deep technical and product expertise, and a belief in developing the skills and talents of others, then you may be the ideal person for this position and we would love to get to know you.

Responsibilities
The successful candidate will:

• Build and develop a high performing and elite team of leaders and engineers who have responsibility for engineering, implementing and maintaining our core infrastructure, data infrastructure, core services and core products. 
• Develop and own an infrastructure product strategy and roadmap that enables our customers to grow through innovation, efficiency, reliability and security in alignment with the company goals.
• Develop productive, collaborative, trusting cross-functional relationships with various groups including key stakeholders and team leads across Okra. 
• Determine, maintain, and regularly report on success metrics that measure the operational health, performance, effectiveness and efficiency of the products the team is responsible for delivering.
• Demonstrate hands-on technical depth that enables direct oversight, problem-solving leadership, and oversight of complex infrastructure implementation, system upgrades, software engineering principles and operational troubleshooting.
• Meaningfully shape future iterations of the Okra product 
• Ruthlessly prioritize workloads against available resources, level of impact, and desired business impact.
• Ensure launches are of the highest quality, can support mission-critical enterprise and consumer uses, and are delivered on time to meet stringent timelines
• Collaborate with the executive team to align on technology strategy and clearly communicate to stakeholders on the engineering vision, roadmap, and progress. 

Requirements
What will help you succeed:

• You will have seen what great looks like, you have led technology teams that have built products that are industry leading and you are known for raising the bar
• You have 10+ years of relevant experience including 5+ years of experience leading a 20+ engineering organization and leadership experience overseeing managers and directors
• 10+ years of overall technical experience, including deep technical knowledge of infrastructure management of diverse local- and cloud-based topologies with strong emphasis on cloud infrastructure
• You have a solid track rector of developing software products from inception to mass adoption
• Demonstrated ability to manage, motivate and hold accountable a high-performing, distributed team and can take advantage of talent across geographies - you are known as a talent magnet
• Demonstrated ability to set and guide engineering strategy in collaboration with product priorities and objectives
• Demonstrated ability to bring people together and motivate them to tackle a set of strategies and goals
• Experience leading within an infrastructure environment as well as consumer-grade applications. 
• 5+ years of experience of managing products, budgets, and justifying resource needs to senior leaders and finance partners.
• Prior experience and demonstrated success delivering technical solutions in high-growth environments with a proven track record of innovative thinking balanced with a strong customer and quality focus.
• A bias to action and execution, ability to operate in rigorous sprints, and fast productive cycles
• Forward-thinking strategist with proven success in translating strategy to tactical plans with high-quality execution and delivery, including the ability to get hands-on when developing systems architectures.

Nice to have: 

• Prior demonstrated experience being a catalyst for positive change and demonstrated ability to influence and be influenced, all within a global, fast-paced growth environment.
• A healthy skepticism for the status quo and an unwillingness to settle.
• An empathetic leadership style driven by strong self-awareness.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.