Principal Software Architect (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: Principal Software Architect

Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full Time

The role

• We are looking for a Staff or Principal Software Architect to join our Core Services team.
• As the most senior engineer in the team, you will be responsible for driving key architecture decisions and overall technical direction to design and build extensible, scalable, maintainable, performant, and secure financial systems.
• You will help ideate solutions to customer pains and translate product goals into technical implementation strategy while identifying key iterations towards the team’s roadmap.
• You offer a breadth of experience in distributed systems, a strong understanding of the entire end-to-end full-stack technology layers and components, and a depth of expertise in open banking and financial integrations.
• Okra brings multiple years of experience in the African ecosystem, a diverse team working across continents, and a culture that puts customer focus, trust, and idea-meritocracy front and center.
• You will get to work directly with our senior leaders, interact across teams, and see your impact.

What you will do

• Take full technical ownership of one or more core services
• Drive and influence key architecture and implementation decisions
• Develop and lead architecture refactoring and migration strategies
• Work with other teams to influence architecture and development best practices
• Own and influence the overall technical quality of our systems
• Own both internal and external developer experience
• Coach and mentor other developers.

What will help you succeed

• Multiple years of experience as a Senior Software Architect or similar role
• Deep understanding of Okra’s current stack of Node.js, React, MongoDB, Kafka, Puppeteer, Docker, and Socket.io
• Hands-on experience in integrating with banks and other financial institutions
• Deep understanding of industry-specific regulations and best practices
• Experience designing and developing delightful APIs
• Experience with large-scale web and application scraping
• Enjoying solving problems that have no direct or obvious solution.
• Ability to seamlessly switch between business and technical conversations.

Nice to have:

• Experience working with TypeScript
• Schema-driven API design, implementation, and tooling experience
• Hands-on experience with migrating from a monolithic architecture to microservices
• Deep understanding of pros and caveats of multiple async integration patterns.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.