About the role

You will lead the engineering organization by shaping technology strategy, mentoring team leads, and overseeing day-to-day delivery. Additionally, you will drive architectural excellence through hands-on involvement in event-driven systems and modern engineering practices.

What they look for

Engineering leadership Event-driven systems Event sourcing Domain-driven design Clean architecture Hexagonal architecture Distributed systems Cloud-native GCP Go Java Backend-for-frontend Mentoring Architecture strategy CI/CD Observability

Requirements

Candidates must have 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a multi-year background at the Staff or Principal level. Deep expertise in event-driven systems, Domain-Driven Design, and cloud-native architectures is required.

Benefits

Competitive compensation Continuous learning and growth opportunities

Full description

Head of Engineering — Roamtech

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

About Roamtech Roamtech is an energetic, modern FinTech founded in Nairobi and operating globally. We operate with a startup mindset fast-paced, high‑impact, and driven by curiosity. Innovation is at the core of everything we do. We iterate quickly, learn continuously, and empower our teams to ship meaningful products.

Our engineering organization is modern, collaborative, and grounded in lean Scrum principles. We work closely across teams to build scalable, reliable, and user‑centric financial technology solutions.

Role Summary

We’re hiring a Head of Engineering to join our Engineering Leadership team, reporting directly to the CTO.

This role requires a multiple year Staff- / Principle- Engineering level background or higher.

You will be responsible for shaping Roamtech’s technology strategy, leading the overall day-to-day engineering delivery/execution and its group of Engineering Team Leads, while working closely with the CTO to shape the engineering organization into a high performance culture.

This role is for a hands-on engineering leader with deep architectural expertise, particularly in event-driven systems and Event Sourcing, who can both design and implement modern engineering practices while leading multiple Engineering Team Leads. You will shape how engineering is done at Roamtech — technically, culturally, and operationally.

What You will Do

Engineering Leadership

· Lead, mentor, and coach multiple Engineering Team Leads.

· Act as a technical authority and escalation point across teams.

· Lead by example through hands-on involvement in architecture, design, and critical implementations.

· Build a strong engineering culture grounded in ownership, pragmatism, and continuous improvement.

Architecture & Technical Excellence

· Own and evolve Roamtech’s engineering architecture strategy together with the Head of Architecture.

· Design, review, and guide implementation of event-driven systems, including Event Sourcing.

· Champion Domain-Driven Design (DDD), bounded contexts, and clear domain ownership.

· Enforce and evolve modern architectural patterns: Clean Architecture, Hexagonal Architecture, SOA, EDA, and distributed systems best practices.

· Ensure systems are scalable, resilient, observable, and secure.

· Implement a state-of-the-art monitoring system across all products and codebases to ensure proactive incident recognition and detection.

Processes, Practices & Standards

· Design and continuously improve engineering processes across teams.

· Establish clear standards for code quality, testing, CI/CD, monitoring, observability, and operational excellence.

· Balance speed and quality in a startup-like environment without compromising long-term maintainability.

· Drive consistent, high-quality execution across teams while enabling autonomy.

· Work closely with the Head of Product to ensure timely delivery of the committed roadmap.

· Work together with Business Owners of the individual products to manage challenges and execution.

Execution & Collaboration

· Partner closely with the CTO, Head of Product, and other stakeholders on strategy and delivery.

· Support roadmap planning and ensure engineering execution aligns with product and business goals.

· Help teams navigate trade-offs between delivery, quality, and technical debt.

What We are Looking For

Required

· 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.

· Multi year background at Staff or Principal Engineer level prior to or alongside leadership roles.

· Deep, hands-on experience designing and building event-driven systems, including Event Sourcing.

· Proven expertise in Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and complex domain modeling.

· Strong experience with Clean Architecture, Hexagonal Architecture, and modern distributed system design.

· Cloud-native experience (GCP strongly preferred).

· Demonstrated ability to design and implement scalable engineering processes across multiple teams.

· Experience leading and coaching Engineering Team Leads.

· Strong communication skills and ability to influence across the organization.

Highly Preferred

· Strong experience with Go and/or Java in production, high-scale systems.

· Experience in modernizing legacy systems while building new greenfield architectures.

· Hands-on experience in building Backend-For-Frontend (BFF) systems.

· Startup or scale-up background with a strong ownership mindset.

· Proven culture carrier who actively shapes and reinforces engineering values.