Job Openings at Okra

Okra - Our mission is to digitize financial services. We are building the tools and services that will enable developers launch, optimize, & scale financial platforms and services. Our thesis is simply the fact that — financial innovation cannot exist without an Open Finance infrastructure. Essentially, the growth of the African Fintech industry is intrinsically tied to the success of an infrastructure like Okra.


Okra powers the tools that millions of people rely on to plan and manage their finances today. We are proudly working with hundreds of companies like Interswitch and D-local, and many of the largest financial institutions to make it easy for people to securely connect their accounts to the apps and services they choose. Okra’s network covers over 100 banks and financial institutions across Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.

We are recruiting to fill the following positions below:

1.) Principal Software Architect

Job Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full Time

The role

  • We are looking for a Staff or Principal Software Architect to join our Core Services team.
  • As the most senior engineer in the team, you will be responsible for driving key architecture decisions and overall technical direction to design and build extensible, scalable, maintainable, performant, and secure financial systems.
  • Okra brings multiple years of experience in the African ecosystem, a diverse team working across continents, and a culture that puts customer focus, trust, and idea-meritocracy front and center.
  • You will help ideate solutions to customer pains and translate product goals into technical implementation strategy while identifying key iterations towards the team’s roadmap.
  • You offer a breadth of experience in distributed systems, a strong understanding of the entire end-to-end full-stack technology layers and components, and a depth of expertise in open banking and financial integrations.
  • You will get to work directly with our senior leaders, interact across teams, and see your impact.

What you will do

  • Take full technical ownership of one or more core services
  • Drive and influence key architecture and implementation decisions
  • Own and influence the overall technical quality of our systems
  • Own both internal and external developer experience
  • Develop and lead architecture refactoring and migration strategies
  • Work with other teams to influence architecture and development best practices
  • Coach and mentor other developers.

What will help you succeed

  • Multiple years of experience as a Senior Software Architect or similar role
  • Deep understanding of Okra’s current stack of Node.js, React, MongoDB, Kafka, Puppeteer, Docker, and Socket.io
  • Experience with large-scale web and application scraping
  • Enjoying solving problems that have no direct or obvious solution.
  • Hands-on experience in integrating with banks and other financial institutions
  • Deep understanding of industry-specific regulations and best practices
  • Experience designing and developing delightful APIs
  • Ability to seamlessly switch between business and technical conversations.

Nice to have:

  • Experience working with TypeScript
  • Schema-driven API design, implementation, and tooling experience
  • Hands-on experience with migrating from a monolithic architecture to microservices
  • Deep understanding of pros and caveats of multiple async integration patterns.

Click here to apply online

Note

  • You should still apply if you aren’t ready for the the level of this role yet or don’t check all the boxes. We care about potential. We are willing to start a great candidate with lower expectations alongside a path and the support to grow in time.
  • We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

 

 

2.) Senior DevOps Engineer

Job Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full Time

The role

  • We are looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer to join our Cloud Infrastructure to build out the platform tooling and automation that our systems are scaling on.
  • As a senior engineer in the team, you will lead key initiatives around observability, infrastructure as code, multi-cloud, automation, and developer experience, as well as newly growing efforts in security, compliance, and platform availability.
  • You offer a breadth of experience in adopting cloud infrastructure, working across multiple cloud providers with a strong conviction to offer top developer experience, while you have a depth of expertise in one of the team's key areas at a level that sets the standard for the entire team.
  • Okra brings multiple years of experience in the African ecosystem, a diverse team working across continents, and a culture that puts customer focus, trust, idea-meritocracy and world-class execution front and center. You will own key initiatives, interact across teams, and see your impact.

What you will do

  • Automate infrastructure provisioning
  • Maintain and optimize existing systems for performance and cost
  • Implement and extend monitoring and alerting systems
  • Improve developer experience of our infrastructure as code approach
  • Help the team set ongoing goals and build roadmaps to achieve them
  • Help automate quality checks to ensure engineering standards
  • Help abstract complexities of cloud vendors and work across multi-cloud
  • Help product engineering teams adopt DevOps culture
  • Work with other teams to understand their needs and find solutions
  • Explore and own new responsibility areas for the team.

What will help you succeed

  • Multiple years of experience as a DevOps Engineers
  • Hands-on experience with Terraform
  • Experience optimizing CI/CD pipelines and managing multiple environments
  • Ability to collaborate with both business and technical partners
  • Strong experience using AWS services such as EC2, S3, Redshift
  • Experience working in environments with strict security and compliance requirements
  • Enjoying solving problems that have no direct or obvious solution.
  • Strong skills in troubleshooting and debugging in complex systems
  • Good understanding of Okra's current workloads that run stacks of Node.js, React, MongoDB, Kafka, Puppeteer, Docker, and Socket.io.

Nice to have:

  • Experience with trunk-based development infrastructure
  • Experience building out continuous delivery pipelines
  • Applied understanding of secure-by-design approach
  • Hands-on experience with developer productivity tooling and automations.

Click here to apply online

Note

  • You should still apply if you aren’t ready for the the level of this role yet or don’t check all the boxes. We care about potential. We are willing to start a great candidate with lower expectations alongside a path and the support to grow in time.
  • We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

 

3.) Senior Engineering Manager

Job Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full Time

The role

  • We are looking for a seasoned engineering leader to join our engineering leadership team.
  • You offer a breadth of combined experience in technical background and leadership experience, working with other leaders across organizations.
  • You are intimately familiar with driving change and adoption, implementing a delivery mindset as well as applying lean, enabling tools and processes.
  • You have a depth of expertise in a key relevant area that can directly impact one or more of speed, cost, and quality.
  • Okra brings multiple years of experience in the African ecosystem, a diverse team working across continents, and a culture that puts customer focus, trust, and idea-meritocracy front and center.
  • As one of the most senior engineering leaders in the team, you will work across multiple teams to drive alignment, strategy adoption, and continuous delivery. You will assume direct EM responsibility for one of our teams while supporting others through influence.
  • You will be able to assess a variety of needs, recognize opportunities, and prioritize across challenges such as team-level goal setting, culture development, organizational structure, delivery velocity, budget management, team building, as well as individual coaching and mentoring.
  • You will get to work directly with our senior leaders, interact across teams, and see your impact.

What you will do

  • Take full EM responsibility of one of our teams
  • Drive and influence delivery across multiple teams
  • Manage, coach, and mentor individual contributors as well as potential managers
  • Assist and influence architecture and development best practices
  • Help identify and observe core engineering metrics
  • Drive continuous delivery implementation and adoption
  • Own key initiatives across one or more of speed, cost, and quality
  • Share your experience and knowhow with other engineering leaders
  • Help improve developer experience and overall productivity.

What will help you succeed

  • Multiple years of experience as an Engineering Manager
  • Experience managing multiple teams
  • Enjoying solving problems that have no direct or obvious solution.
  • Ability to seamlessly switch between business and technical conversations
  • Hands-on experience mapping products, domains, technology, and resources to teams
  • Proven track record of owning engineering initiatives end-to-end
  • Deep understanding of core team performance and developer productivity metrics
  • Experience managing team-level infrastructure budgets.

Nice to have:

  • Experience managing managers
  • Experience integrating and working with banks and financial institutions
  • Familiarity with Okra’s current stack of Node.js, React, MongoDB, Kafka, Puppeteer, Docker, and Socket.io
  • Understanding of low-level engineering and architecture best practices
  • Experience working with distributed teams.

Click here to apply online

Note

  • You should still apply if you aren’t ready for the the level of this role yet or don’t check all the boxes. We care about potential. We are willing to start a great candidate with lower expectations alongside a path and the support to grow in time.
  • We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

 

 

4.) Senior / Staff Full-Stack Developer

Job Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full Time

The role

  • We seek Senior or Staff Full-stack developers to join our Core Platform and Core Services teams that build deep financial integrations, streamlined APIs, and delightful UIs for end users to interact with.
  • As a senior engineer in the team, you will be responsible for leading key products and features, as well as initiatives to level up our overall software quality.
  • You will be key in influencing your team members and fostering a world-class team by applying your skills and experience to build extensible, scalable, maintainable, performant, and secure financial systems.
  • You offer a breadth of experience in building software across the entire end-to-end full-stack technology layers and components and a depth of expertise in at least one part of the stack at a level that sets the standard for the entire team.
  • Okra brings multiple years of experience in the African ecosystem, a diverse team working across continents, and a culture that puts customer focus, trust, idea-meritocracy and world-class execution front and center.
  • You will own key initiatives, interact across teams, and see your impact.

What you will do

  • Take full technical ownership of one or more features or products
  • Support product ideation with technical insight
  • Help set new technical standards and lead their adoption
  • Contribute to multiple frontend and backend repositories
  • Review contributions from other team members and other teams
  • Help convert product requirements into a technical approach
  • Help break down ambitious goals into small, actionable iterations
  • Support architecture and development best practice decisions
  • Work with other teams to integrate with multiple systems
  • Coach and mentor junior developers.

What will help you succeed

  • Multiple years of experience as a Senior Full-stack Developer
  • Good understanding of Okra's current stack of Node.js, React, MongoDB, Kafka, Puppeteer, Docker, and Socket.io
  • Deep expertise in at least one of the components of the Okra stack
  • Enjoying solving problems that have no direct or obvious solution.
  • Strong skills in troubleshooting and debugging in complex systems
  • Hands-on experience in integrating with banks and other financial institutions
  • Understanding of industry-specific regulations and best practices
  • Understanding of established frontend, API, and database best practices
  • Ability to collaborate with both business and technical partners.

Nice to have:

  • Experience with web and application scraping
  • Experience working with and migrating to TypeScript
  • Test-driven development experience
  • Experience working with microservices and async integration patterns.

Click here to apply online

Note

  • You should still apply if you aren’t ready for the the level of this role yet or don’t check all the boxes. We care about potential. We are willing to start a great candidate with lower expectations alongside a path and the support to grow in time.
  • We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.