Vice President, Engineering (Digital Assets & Payments) at iRecruiters Africa Limited

• This role is pivotal: you will architect the next evolution of the platform, build and scale high-performing teams, and create the engineering culture and systems required to support 10x growth in the coming year.
• If you excel in high-growth, high-stakes environments and are driven to build resilient, scalable systems that can power millions of users, this opportunity is built for you.

Key Responsibilities

Drive Engineering Excellence and Operational Velocity

• Establish strong alignment between Engineering and Product within the first 90 days—ensuring shared priorities, predictable delivery, and accountability.
• Implement an engineering execution framework that improves delivery speed and code quality by 30% within the first quarter.
• Standardize engineering rituals (sprints, retrospectives, code reviews) for consistent, high-quality output.

Lead Platform Architecture & Infrastructure Evolution

• Conduct a full architecture assessment within 90 days to identify scalability, latency, and reliability gaps.
• Design and execute a 12-month platform evolution roadmap (Java-based) with clear milestones for modularization, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Ensure infrastructure readiness to support 10x transaction volumes with sub-second latency (<1s) by Q1 2026.

Redesign & Scale Technical Teams

• Redefine engineering team structure within 60 days to improve clarity, ownership, and inter-team coordination.
• Recruit and onboard at least three senior-level engineers or technical leads (Java, Distributed Systems, DevOps) by Q1 2026.
• Deploy an onboarding process that ramps new engineers to full productivity within 30 days.

Build, Grow, and Retain a High-Performing Engineering Culture

• Introduce a career development and performance management framework within the first 3 months.
• Identify and groom high-potential engineering talent into leadership pathways by Q3 2026.
• Maintain an engineering retention rate of 95%+ by partnering closely with People & Culture.

Biggest Challenges You’ll Solve

• Translating rapidly evolving product and market priorities into clear engineering execution.
• Scaling core infrastructure to support new product experiences and massive transaction growth.
• Building a culture of ownership, speed, reliability, and engineering discipline.
• Recruiting and retaining world-class engineering talent in a competitive global market.

Requirements

What We’re Looking For

• 7–10+ years leading high-performing engineering teams (30+ engineers) in high-growth crypto, fintech, payments, or marketplace environments.
• Deep technical expertise in Java-based backend systems and distributed systems architecture.
• Proven ability to design engineering org structures that drive speed, autonomy, and accountability.
• Strong partnership track record with Product, Commercial, and Design teams.
• Experience recruiting and scaling senior engineering talent.
• Demonstrated ability to scale platforms without compromising reliability or security.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience scaling crypto exchanges, wallets, or digital payments platforms.
• Exposure to blockchain technologies, smart contract design, or cryptographic security.
• Familiarity with fintech/crypto regulatory and compliance frameworks.