Job Description
Why this role exists
You will define the backend—technically, operationally, and architecturally.
An early prototype exists. Your mandate is to turn it into a production system that can safely handle real users and real money, then extend it into a platform capable of supporting multiple products.
This includes designing and owning the most critical layers of the system:
• Identity and authentication
• Payments and money movement
• KYC, fraud, and compliance infrastructure
• Observability and operational reliability
This is a high-agency, zero-abstraction role. There is no separation between “engineering” and “ownership.” You are responsible for both.
What you will own
You will own the backend as a system—not just code, but behavior in production.
Core system architecture
• Design and evolve a production-grade API from an early prototype
• Define service boundaries, data models, and long-term architectural direction
• Make foundational decisions on scaling strategy, tenancy, and system decomposition
• Introduce TypeScript (or equivalent rigor) as the system matures
Payments and financial flows
• Implement and harden payment flows using Stripe (or equivalent)
• Design for correctness under failure: retries, idempotency, reconciliation
• Handle refunds, disputes, edge cases, and real-world transaction behavior
• Build systems that safely move and track money across multiple states
Identity, auth, and user integrity
• Design authentication systems (sessions, JWTs, OAuth, magic links)
• Implement abuse prevention: rate limiting, bot protection, anomaly detection
• Build toward federated identity and multi-tenant user models
• Ensure account security and recovery flows are robust
Compliance and regulated infrastructure
• Integrate KYC/KYB, identity verification, and sanctions screening
• Design systems that enforce compliance rules at the application layer
• Work alongside compliance counsel and payment providers
• Build with awareness of regulatory constraints (AML, MSB, etc.)
Data and persistence
• Own Postgres schema design, migrations, and performance tuning
• Optimize queries using indexes, query plans, and real-world load patterns
• Design for durability, backups, and data recovery
• Plan for replication, scaling, and future data segmentation
Observability and reliability
• Implement structured logging, metrics, and tracing
• Define alerting that is actionable, not noisy
• Own uptime, incident response, and postmortems
• Build systems that are debuggable under real production pressure
Testing and correctness
• Establish testing standards across the codebase
• Build coverage across critical paths: payments, auth, webhooks, edge cases
• Design testable systems, not just tested ones
• Prevent regressions in high-risk areas (money movement, identity)
Infrastructure and deployment
• Own deployment pipelines, environments, and release processes
• Implement CI/CD with safe rollout strategies
• Manage secrets, environments, and runtime configuration
• Ensure the system can be deployed, rolled back, and audited reliably
Team and technical leadership
• Review code and set engineering standards as the team grows
• Write design docs that shape future architecture
• Help hire and evaluate future backend engineers
• Raise the bar on clarity, rigor, and decision-making
What you need to bringDeep backend experience
• Significant experience building and operating production backend systems
• You’ve owned systems that failed in production—and fixed them properly
• You understand tradeoffs between speed, correctness, and scalability
Payments fluency
• Hands-on experience implementing payments in production
• Strong understanding of payment flows, failure modes, and reconciliation
• Familiarity with disputes, refunds, and real-world transaction behavior
Strong data layer expertise
• Deep experience with Postgres (or equivalent relational systems)
• Ability to design schemas that evolve cleanly over time
• Comfortable analyzing and improving query performance
Identity and security fundamentals
• Experience building authentication and authorization systems
• Understanding of session management, token design, and attack surfaces
• Ability to design systems that are secure under adversarial conditions
Production mindset
• You’ve worked with observability tools and know how to debug live systems
• You write logs and metrics with intent, not as an afterthought
• You think in terms of failure modes, not just happy paths
Exposure to regulated or high-trust systems
• Familiarity with KYC, AML, fraud systems, or adjacent domains
• Understanding of why compliance constraints shape architecture
• Ability to work with external vendors and requirements without losing velocity
Technical judgment
• You can make decisions with incomplete information
• You avoid overengineering but don’t cut corners where it matters
• You know when to build for now vs. build for scale
Communication
• You write clearly and think in systems
• You can explain not just what you built, but why
• You are comfortable operating directly with a founder and external partners
Nice-to-haves
• Experience building marketplaces or multi-sided platforms
• Background in fintech or financial infrastructure
• Exposure to compliance frameworks (BSA/AML, SOC 2, etc.)
• Experience with distributed or multi-tenant systems
• Familiarity with modern infra tooling (containers, CI/CD, cloud platforms)
• Experience migrating systems (e.g., SQLite → Postgres, monolith → services)
Pay: ₦400,000.00 - ₦500,000.00 per month
Work Location: Remote
