Senior Implementation Engineer at Interswitch

About the company:

• Interswitch is an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce company that facilitates the electronic circulation of money as well as the exchange of value between individuals and organizations on a timely and consistent basis. Our vision is to build an Africa where payment is a seamless part of everyday life.

Job Purpose:

• Lead the delivery and support of complex solutions and service requests, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and customer needs.
• Provides Technical Support / Site Reliability Engineering services to implement and support the delivery of Value-Added Services (VAS) around SMS Messaging, USSD, and Mobile/Digital Financial Services.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and professional development within the team.

Responsibilities 

Technical Implementation and Delivery

• Lead the design, installation, configuration, and delivery of systems supporting Interswitch’s messaging, USSD, Mobile, and Digital infrastructure applications.
• Oversee the implementation of SMS, USSD gateway, Mobile Banking Proxies, and 2FA
• Servers for bank operations and business continuity, including the resolution of postmigration incidents.
• Develop comprehensive documentation for configuration changes, impact assessments, and rollback procedures, ensuring all changes are communicated effectively to relevant stakeholders.
• Identify and implement scalable solutions to optimize resource utilization and provide economies of scale.
• Drive the engineering of SA-related solutions for various projects and operational needs, initiating requests for network configuration changes with the infrastructure management team.

Technical Support and Escalation Management

• Serve as the primary point of contact for technical inquiries from customers/clients, ensuring timely closure of support tickets on the Interswitch Helpdesk platform.
• Provide third-level incident resolution for complex issues related to SMS Messaging/USSD/
• Mobile Banking, and Internet Banking.
• Monitor message queues, network outages, and e-payment failures (Bills payment/VTU), escalating and collaborating with TELCO's/third-party IT support teams for swift resolution.
• Analyze customer support data trends to identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to enhance service quality.
• Engage with MNOs for sender ID registration and whitelisting, streamlining the onboarding process for new and existing SMS customers.

Technology Infrastructure and Service Management

• Proactively monitor and optimize the performance of technical infrastructure and services, utilizing advanced tools like App Dynamics, Nagios, Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace, and DataDog.
• Ensure compliance with internal and external regulatory requirements in technology and service management.
• Represent customers in liaising with shared technology teams on incident reports, ensuring effective communication of service downtimes or notifications to both internal and external customers.
• Report significant issues to line managers, product managers, and software development clusters, providing actionable insights for resolution. 

System Maintenance and Optimization

• Lead weekly routine/health check maintenance and optimization efforts for existing Interswitch Digital Messaging and Mobile Banking systems to ensure reliability and performance.
• Oversee database backups, cleanup, and space reclamation on SMS gateway and mobile banking proxies to maintain optimal storage availability.
• Conduct regular system performance assessments, recommending and implementing improvements to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
• Apply system and application patch updates as required, ensuring server workloads are upto- date and secure.

Collaboration and Communication

• Collaborate with Project Managers, Product Owners, Back-office Operations, and Quality Assurance (QA) Engineers to achieve Interswitch Systegra business goals.
• Communicate complex technical information effectively to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders, ensuring clarity and understanding.

Continuous Improvement

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of technical support and engineering processes.
• Implement and advocate for continuous delivery practices, ensuring code changes are automatically prepared for deployment to production.

Leadership and Mentorship

• Mentor and guide junior engineers, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and professional development within the team.
• Lead technical training sessions and workshops to enhance team capabilities and ensure alignment with industry best practices.
• Provide strategic input into the development of technical roadmaps and project planning, aligning with organizational goals and customer needs.
• Client and Customer Management (Internal)
• Conduct post-implementation training and user knowledge sharing, ensuring customers and internal teams are well-informed and capable of utilizing new features and services effectively.

CAPABILITIES

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES

• Technical Skills: Demonstrates advanced technical proficiency in payment systems, troubleshooting, and problem resolution, ensuring efficient and effective support.
• Analytic Skills: Exhibits excellent analytical abilities to diagnose issues, interpret data, and develop solutions, enhancing system performance and reliability.
• Time Management Skills: Effectively prioritizes tasks and manages time to meet deadlines and service level agreements, maintaining high productivity levels.
• Organizational Skills: Maintains organized workflows, documentation, and processes to ensure smooth operations and easy access to information.
• Customer Service Skills: Provides exceptional customer service by addressing client issues promptly, courteously, and effectively, fostering positive relationships.
• Communication Skills: Communicates clearly and effectively with clients, team members, and stakeholders, ensuring accurate information exchange and collaboration.

EDUCATION

General Education

• University Post Graduate Degree in Information Technology, Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or any Technology-related fields.
• Evidence of strong industry/sector participation and relevant professional certifications

such as:

• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
• CompTIA Security+, Network + CompTIA Linux +, Linux Professional Institute (Linux Essentials)
• Cisco Certified Network Associate
• Other technical proficiencies required for this role include:
• Microsoft SQL MCTS, MySQL, and Oracle Database administration
• Java and .Net Fundamentals, Jboss/Wildfly, Tomcat-Apache server
• Develop APIs using Python, C# or JAVA for web and mobile platforms
• Strong experience managing Cloud infrastructure - AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.
• Databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB) and SQL query optimization Message queuing: Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ,
• Familiarity with DevOps methodology and Tools (Git, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jira, Postman, Jenkins, Docker and kubernetes
• Application Performance and System/Server/Service Monitoring (AppDynamics, Grafana, Kibana, etc.)

EXPERIENCE

General Experience

• At least 5-7 years of Enterprise Engineering/Technical Support experience, preferably in a
• reputable Financial Institution, FinTech, Telecommunications, or Service Provider company.