Head of Workplace IT at M-KOPA

The Impact

• Your leadership will directly enable the people and infrastructure behind a business that's unlocked over $2 billion in credit for more than 10 million customers across Africa.
• Every reliable network, every well-run service desk ticket, and every secure endpoint you manage supports the 2,500+ employees and 35,000+ agents working to bring financial inclusion to Every Day Earners. It's your chance to be the backbone of something that's genuinely transforming lives across a continent.

What You'll Do

• At M-KOPA, you'll own the Workplace IT roadmap end-to-end — from networks and telephony to end-user compute, identity, productivity tooling, and service management.
• You'll lead and grow a multi-country Workplace IT team, own the opex and capex budget, and drive cost discipline across hardware, connectivity, telephony, and software.
• Join us in combining strong technical infrastructure with a genuinely user-focused mindset that keeps a fast-growing, multi-country fintech productive and secure.

Required Experience

• Proven leadership of a multi-site IT function at scale, ideally across multiple countries
• Strong commercial and vendor-management skills — negotiating and managing ISPs, telco, hardware suppliers, and SaaS/MSP contracts
• Strong security mindset and understanding of identity, endpoint, and network security
• Solid network monitoring and performance fundamentals, and enough infrastructure depth (including physical/server-room engineering) to hold their own with specialists
• Comfort operating in high-growth, emerging-market environments
• User-focused mindset and experience collecting and responding to internal feedback on team performance
• Experience leading a workplace IT team, or strong IC/manager experience in a related domain with demonstrable readiness to take the next step.

Your Environment:

• Networks & telephony: Wired and wireless networks across all offices, warehouses, and retail sites; contact-centre telephony across ~10 call-centre sites
• On-site infrastructure: On-prem hardware and physical environments — server rooms, power, cooling, physical security, CCTV
• End-user compute & mobility: Full lifecycle management of laptops, desktops, and phones for 2,500+ employees, plus endpoint and mobile device management (MDM)
• Identity & access: Identity platform (directory, SSO, MFA), joiner/mover/leaver processes, and recertification for internal and external applications
• Productivity & collaboration: Core software suite selection and management (collaboration, back-office, AI tools), vendor/contract management, licensing/SaaS spend, meeting-room and AV systems
• Security & resilience: IT-side security hygiene (patching, vulnerability remediation, endpoint protection, hardening), business continuity and disaster recovery.

Our Workplace IT Approach:

• We balance cost, performance, security, and resilience — especially in variable-connectivity markets
• We partner closely with the Security function on IT-side security hygiene, with clear ownership boundaries between the two functions
• We keep access controls operationally excellent, low-friction for users, and audit-ready
• We set and drive the norms and adoption practices that make tools actually succeed, not just get deployed
• We measure ourselves against SLAs and service performance metrics that show IT is delivering.

What You Need:

• We care more about your skills than where you got them from — relevant degrees or certifications (e.g. ITIL, CISSP, cloud/network certs) are desirable but not required.

Location & Benefits

• Based in one of M-KOPA's operating markets — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, or Uganda — or in the UK, with regular travel across M-KOPA's operating markets (current and future)
• Significant travel expected — potentially up to 25% at times, especially in the early phases of the role
• Work with diverse teams across UK, Europe, and Africa
• Professional development programs and coaching partnerships
• Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements
• Well-being support and career growth opportunities.