Own the technical architecture for your squad's domain - system design, API contracts, data models, integration patterns, and the Architectural Decision Records that document why.
Enforce the Watu engineering standards within your squad: GitHub for all code, mandatory PR review, coverage gates, OpenAPI documentation, runbooks, and secrets management.
Be the squad's representative to the Platform General Architecture - escalate cross-squad concerns, contribute to shared standards, and ensure your squad's patterns align with the broader platform direction.

Delivery & quality

Review and approve all pull requests for your squad. Not as a bottleneck, but as the quality gate. Your name is on everything that ships.
Define and maintain the squad's Definition of Done. Work with the embedded QA engineer to ensure quality is built in, not bolted on.
Own the squad's release process. Nothing ships without your sign-off - including work from external partners where applicable.
Drive sprint planning with the Product Owner - translate user stories into technical tasks, surface dependencies, flag risks early.

Partner & vendor governance

Where your squad governs an external partner, you are the technical point of accountability. The partner executes; you govern. Architecture decisions, code quality, and release timing are owned internally.
Review partner code via PR access. Nothing a partner ships enters production without your review.

People management (light but real)

You have 4-6 direct reports: typically 1–2 Backend Engineers, 1–2 Frontend/Mobile Engineers, and 1-2 QA Engineers. They report to you for day-to-day work; the QA Chapter Lead reports to the Head of Engineering for standards but to you operationally.
Unblock engineers actively - pair on hard problems, review designs before they build, and create an environment where asking for help is normal and fast.
Give direct, timely feedback to your direct reports. Engineer growth happens through clear, specific feedback delivered close to the moment - not through annual cycles. You are the primary person responsible for the development of the engineers in your squad.
Your input into performance reviews and hiring decisions carries significant weight - the Head of Engineering will lean heavily on your assessment of each engineer in your squad.
Model AI-native engineering. Every engineer in your squad is expected to use AI/LLM tools actively. You set the tone for what that looks like in practice.

Who You Are

Essential

7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years where you were the de facto technical authority for a significant product area or team.
Strong backend engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, event-driven architecture, API design, database design, and testing strategy.
Proven ability to review and reason about code across the full stack of your domain - you can give a meaningful review on any PR your squad raises.
Experience in an Agile/Scrum or Kanban environment where you drove sprint ceremonies, backlog refinement, and delivery alongside a Product Owner.
Clear, direct communicator - with engineers, with Product, and upward to the Head of Engineering.

Strongly preferred

Experience in fintech, payments, or digital financial services in Africa, LATAM or APAC.
Experience governing external engineering partners or SaaS vendor integrations.
Hands-on experience with Java backend development (our primary backend language).
Familiarity with event-driven architecture, Kafka or equivalent message brokers.

Engineering standards you are expected to uphold

All code in GitHub - mandatory peer review, unified branching strategy, green CI before merge.
APIs documented with OpenAPI/Swagger; Architecture Decision Records for significant decisions.
No secrets in code - AWS Secrets Manager or Vault. OWASP Top 10 awareness is a baseline expectation.
AI/LLM tooling used actively in your daily workflow - code generation, test writing, documentation, debugging.

This role is NOT right for you if

You want to be shielded from difficult technical decisions by a more senior architect above you. There isn't one at this level.
You want to move away from technical work. You will have several direct reports and real people management responsibilities - but you will also be the most technical person in the squad. If the goal is to stop writing code and reviewing architecture, this is the wrong step.
You prefer to work independently and find code review and pair programming friction rather than value.

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