Engineering Manager - NALA

Our mission at NALA is to build payments for the Next Billion, transforming how money moves into Africa, Asia, and beyond. By building cutting-edge payment solutions, we simplify financial transactions for individuals and businesses alike—helping them thrive in a global economy. We are driven by innovation, community, and the belief that everyone deserves access to reliable, efficient, and affordable financial services. If you are passionate about creating meaningful change and shaping the future of fintech in Africa and Asia, join us and be part of a team that is revolutionising financial empowerment on a global scale.

Your responsibilities in this role include:

• Supporting and developing a cross-functional squad of Engineers whilst collaborating with the Product Managers.
• Working closely with engineers to architect and develop the best technical design and approach.
• Being a key technical contributor to the team by getting hands-on with coding as you build high-quality products for NALA.
• Managing the day-to-day activities of the engineering team within an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Helping individuals reach their professional goals through coaching and regular 1:1s, mentoring them on training courses, conferences, and potential stretch projects to pave the way for career progression.
• Developing a high-performing engineering team by managing performance and providing constructive feedback regularly.
• Building a strong team and providing support in hiring new engineers.
• Reporting status of development, quality, operations, and system performance to management regularly.

The approximate role split is:

• 20% Direct line management (approx 5-6 reports)
• 60% Building engineering culture/processes, managing work with other EMs and Product
• 20% Hands-on (System design/writing code)

Our Tech Stack includes:

• Services written in Go, deployed in AWS ECS, communicating with our app via gRPC.
• Our app is written in Dart with Flutter and available on both Android and iOS.
• Back-office and Rafiki's customer-facing web app written in Typescript/React.
• Using Postgres, Kafka, Redis, and Vault.
• Leveraging AWS as much as possible, managed with Terraform.
• Writing unit and integration tests, conducting code reviews, and deploying multiple times a day.
• Utilising Agile frameworks and Jira for management.

Must have job requirements:

• 8+ years of Engineering experience with at least 2 years managing high-performing engineers.
• Empathetic leadership style, caring deeply about helping others achieve their goals.
• Hands-on experience with Go.
• Experience in building complex, scalable, and high-performance products, from idea inception to full development life cycle.
• Experience working asynchronously with global teams using tools like Slack/Teams/Jira.
• Strong time management skills and ability to work on concurrent assignments with different priorities.
• Proven results-oriented person with a strong business and technical vision.
• Passionate about our product and the mission we are on.
• Fluent in written and spoken English.

Nice to have job requirements:

• Experience working in Fintech and Payments.
• Experience in a tech startup.
• Experience in infosec.
• Experience in creating robust, well-polished, and documented server-to-server APIs for customer access (e.g., REST/GraphQL).

Interview Process:

• (30 mins) Interview with the Talent Team - Initial touchpoint to understand your motivations and experiences.
• (1 hour) Coding Challenge - Complete a pair programming exercise live with two engineers.
• (1.5 hours) Architecture Interview - Solve an architecture challenge with two Engineering Managers, along with behavioural questions on team management.
• (30 mins) Interview with the CTO or Hiring Manager - Discuss motivation for the role and ask questions about the business.

References will be conducted as standard for all hires at NALA. We aim to provide timely decisions and feedback on your overall interview process.

Benefits:

• UK - In Office: 27 Days Off Plus UK Bank Holidays, Birthday Leave, Enhanced Parental Leave, Global Workspace access, Learning Budget of $1000 annually, themed snacks and Friday lunch, monthly socials, and free coffee.
• Europe Remote (Must be within GMT +3): 35 Days Off including local bank holidays, Birthday Leave, Enhanced Parental Leave, and Learning Budget of $1000 annually.