Head of Engineering, Field Verification

Who we are

[Employer] Inc. is Africa’s all-in-one financial platform, helping 20 million businesses and individuals access seamless payments, banking, credit, cross-border, and business management tools each month. 

As Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, we power most of the country’s point-of-sale (POS) transactions. Through our subsidiaries, [Employer] Inc. processes over $250 billion in digital payment transaction value annually.

Why South Africa  

South Africa has one of the strongest engineering communities anywhere in the world, and we are deliberately growing our technology organisation in the country. We already have several team members based here. The work is fully remote, and the mission we are working on is a good deal closer to home than it is for our teams elsewhere.

So, now we are looking for our Head of Engineering, Field Verification to join us in South Africa.

About the role

Field Verification is how [Employer] knows that the people and businesses on our platform are real. Every [Employer] customer, retail and business, requires a completed field verification as part of KYC. The platform coordinates physical, in-person checks — verifying individuals, business owners, business addresses and loan guarantors — and it serves nearly every part of the company: onboarding, loans, compliance and the fraud team.

The system works today. A back office gives each business unit visibility and control over its own verification requests. A mobile-friendly web app puts the work in the hands of Field Verification Officers and the cluster leads who manage them across local government areas. An API layer lets other business units push verification requests in and receive results back by webhook, and an assignment algorithm routes each request to an officer close enough to carry it out.

We want to be straightforward about the rest. This domain has never had a dedicated engineering leader, and that is the single biggest constraint on it. The team is one lean, cross-functional squad — an Engineering Manager, four engineers and a QA — carrying verification volume for the entire customer base. They have done that impressively well, but running lean means running in keep-the-lights-on mode, and a long list of things that would make this platform substantially better has been waiting for someone to own it.

That list is the role. Trip and route management, so an officer can plan an optimal day across several sites rather than making a separate journey for each one — today we pay for a round trip per verification, and the logistics are nowhere near optimal. Capacity management. A native mobile app, wanted for a long time and never resourced. Liveness and identity verification tooling, exposed as APIs the rest of the business can build on. And as [Employer] expands into markets where identity verification is as difficult as it is in Nigeria, Kenya among them, a platform that works beyond a single country.

[Employer] is a great deal of room to build here. Whoever takes this on will set the direction rather than inherit someone else's plan, on a system that already carries real weight for the business.

As Head of Engineering, Field Verification, your responsibilities will include:

• Owning the technical strategy, architecture and roadmap for the Field Verification platform end to end, and setting direction for a domain that has been running without dedicated engineering leadership.
• Moving the platform from keep-the-lights-on operation to deliberate, prioritised development.
• Leading and growing the existing cross-functional team, and building the organisation out as scope expands.
• Building the operational efficiency layer — trip and route optimisation, task allocation and capacity management for field officers.
• Owning the platform's client-facing surface: the APIs and webhooks that other business units integrate with, and the back office those units rely on.
• Delivering a native mobile experience for field officers.
• Ensuring verification data is structured, auditable and fit for compliance scrutiny.
• Building for multi-country expansion as [Employer] enters new markets.
• Partnering closely with Product and with the business units that depend on the platform — onboarding, loans, compliance and fraud.
• Defining architecture standards, engineering processes and quality metrics, and hiring and developing engineers and Engineering Managers.

Who you are

• You have built things yourself, and grew into leadership from [Employer]. We are explicit about this: we are not looking for someone who moved into management early and has led from a distance since. We want an engineer who became a leader.
• You are capable across disciplines. Backend, web and mobile. This platform spans all three and you will need credibility in each — a specialist in one layer will struggle here.
• You have built platforms, not just products. Systems used by several distinct groups of users and internal business units, with the flexibility to serve requirements you did not anticipate.
• You are a problem solver first. We would rather have someone adaptable than someone with the exact domain experience. Having built across different industries — fintech, e-commerce, logistics or otherwise — is a positive signal, not a scattered CV.
• You have 10+ years of overall software engineering experience, with substantial hands-on production engineering and strong backend depth. Our backend environment is Java and Spring Boot.
• You have at least 5 years of engineering leadership, including managing Engineering Managers.
• You collaborate well with product and business stakeholders, and can translate operational requirements into engineering solutions.
• Experience working with location and geospatial data is a strong plus, including map integrations.
• Experience with route, trip or delivery optimisation is a strong plus.
• Experience building for compliance — where data must be structured to evidence what was done and when — is a strong plus.
• Experience with identity, KYC or verification platforms is a plus. None of these four are requirements.

Cultural Alignment

As well, we assess every candidate across eight dimensions that define how great leaders operate at [Employer]. We look for evidence of all eight throughout the process, not just in a single conversation.

• Customer Obsession: Build deep empathy for users. Solve problems intuitively, and fix root causes, not just tickets.
• Craft: Master the fundamentals. Reason from first principles, make trade-offs explicit, and raise the bar on quality.
• Systemisation: Turn repeating decisions into scalable mechanisms. Reduce cognitive load and raise engineering quality.
• Urgency: Move with disciplined speed. Act autonomously within scope, remove friction, and escalate risks early.
• Ownership: Treat the platform as your own. Take initiative across boundaries and follow through without reminders.
• No Ego: Put the mission first. Share credit, welcome debate, and never protect status over team outcomes.
• Candour: Surface uncomfortable truths and risks early. Intelligent failure is welcome; concealment is not.
• Integrity: Stay truthful and ethically consistent. Refuse toxic behavior. Performance without integrity is unacceptable.

What Success Looks Like

• The domain has clear technical ownership and direction for the first time.
• The team out of keep-the-lights-on mode and delivering against a prioritised roadmap.
• Measurable improvement in field officer efficiency — more verifications per trip, lower cost per verification.
• A native mobile experience shipped for field officers.
• Verification data that stands up to compliance scrutiny across every business unit the platform serves.
• The platform ready to support a new market.
• A team grown beyond its current size, with a strong bench of engineers and managers.

Why Join Us

• A genuinely greenfield mandate on a system that already matters. Every customer [Employer] onboards passes through this platform.
• A lean, capable team making outsized impact, and the remit to build the organisation around them.
• Breadth: backend, web, mobile, location data, compliance and operational optimisation in one domain.
• Be part of a mission-driven company expanding access to financial services for millions of businesses and individuals.

What To Expect in The Hiring Process

• A preliminary phone call with the recruiter.
• 60 minute High level System Design round with one of our Engineering Managers.
• 60 minute Panel Interview with 2 of our Head of Engineering leaders. 30 minutes focused on a technical deep dive into your CV and into a project or system you built in the past. 30 minutes focused on testing for leadership attributes.
• 60 minute Stakeholder Management Round with one of our Product Heads/VPs, focused on your stakeholder management and collaboration skills with product and business.
• 60 minute Technical round and Culture fit interview with our Co-founder & Group CTO (the hiring manager).