Principal Architect
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Key skills for this role
About the Role
Ezra is seeking a Principal Architect to define the long-term architectural vision and strategy for its lending, data, and customer value platform. The role requires deep hands-on expertise in software, platform, and data architecture, with a focus on scalability, resilience, and security.
Key Skills for This Role
Responsibilities
- Co define and champion the long term technical architecture and standards for the entire platform, ensuring alignment across software engineering, platform engineering, and data architecture domains
- Institute governance models that ensure architectural adherence, quality, and consistency across all technology domains
- Establish and promote best practices for platform engineering (DevOps & cloud) and data architecture
- Collaborate strategically with product managers, engineering managers, and business leaders to translate complex product vision into clear, robust, and well governed technical architectures
- Contribute directly to production code in critical areas, acting as an additional technical coach for engineers
- Lead the architectural design and review process for major platform initiatives
- Help mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and architectural discipline
- Define technology standards, development methodologies, and security best practices for the engineering organization
- Drive the architectural evolution towards service based design, event driven systems, and a modern, highly scalable data architecture
- Design and promote architectural patterns for high availability, fault tolerance, and security across the entire technology stack
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
- 10+ years of professional experience in software development, cloud, DevOps, and architectural design, with a minimum of 3 years focused on architecting large scale, distributed systems
- Strong demonstrated expertise in multiple programming languages
- Proven expertise in architectural design and operation of event driven service based architectures at large scale
- Demonstrated ability to define and govern engineering best practices, including TDD and clean code principles
- Experience with multiple data store management approaches (e.g., relational vs. NoSQL databases), data modelling, and associated technologies
- Expert level knowledge of CI/CD, DevOps practices, containerisation, and public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a track record of driving complex technical decisions across multiple teams
Full Job Posting
About the role
- The Principal Architect is a highly experienced, hands on, senior individual contributor who is accountable for the long term architectural vision, strategy, and technical standards for our mission critical lending, data, and customer value platform.
- This role balances deep, hands on technical expertise in software, platform, and data architecture with the ability to influence and guide multiple engineering teams.
- The Principal Architect ensures that all technical domains are unified under a coherent, scalable, resilient, and secure enterprise architecture that directly supports the company's mission and aggressive growth strategy.
Main Objectives & Responsibilities
- Architectural Vision & Governance: Co define and champion the long term technical architecture and standards for the entire platform, ensuring alignment across software engineering, platform engineering, and data architecture domains.
- Technical Strategy & Architectural Oversight: Institute governance models that ensure architectural adherence, quality, and consistency across all technology domains and that decisions promote scalability, security, and maintainability.
- Platform & Data Excellence: Establish and promote best practices for platform engineering (DevOps & cloud) and data architecture, in line with a culture of system resilience and data integrity.
- Cross Functional Enablement: Collaborate strategically with product managers, engineering managers, and business leaders to translate complex product vision into clear, robust, and well governed technical architectures and execution plans.
- Hands on Delivery & Mentorship: Contribute directly to production code in critical areas, acting as an additional technical coach for engineers and guiding the resolution of the most challenging technical problems.
Key responsibilities
- Architectural Leadership and Mentorship: Partner with the CTO, the Director of Technology Delivery, and Engineering Managers to define, communicate, and execute the technology strategy and architectural roadmap for the lending and data platforms.
- Technical Excellence and Quality Assurance: Help instill a culture of technical rigour, passionately advocating for approaches such as Test Driven Development and secure coding practices.
- Technology Roadmapping for Software, Platform & Data: Drive the architectural evolution towards service based design, event driven systems, and a modern, highly scalable data architecture.
- System Resilience and Data Governance: Design and promote architectural patterns for high availability, fault tolerance, and security across the entire technology stack.
- Delivery Enablement and Performance Optimization: Consult on the execution of the technical roadmap, providing architectural clarity and hands on advice to unblock teams and accelerate delivery.
Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
- 10+ years of professional experience in software development, cloud, DevOps, and architectural design, with a minimum of 3 years focused on architecting large scale, distributed systems.
- Strong demonstrated expertise in multiple programming languages.
- Proven expertise in architectural design and operation of event driven service based architectures at large scale.
- Demonstrated ability to define and govern engineering best practices, including TDD and clean code principles.
- Experience with multiple data store management approaches (e.g., relational vs. NoSQL databases), data modelling, and associated technologies.
- Expert level knowledge of CI/CD, DevOps practices, containerisation, and public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
- Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a track record of driving complex technical decisions across multiple teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Strong technical background and deep proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
- Hands on experience or architectural oversight in Clojure or other functional programming languages.
- Proven experience with data architecture, data warehousing concepts, and ETL/ELT pipelines.
- Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
- Experience working in a regulated FinTech or financial services environment.
Company overview
- Ezra provides B2B digital lending solutions for emerging markets in partnership with mobile and digital wallet operators and financial service providers.
- Ezra supports 24 operations in 23 countries, across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
- Our flagship products are Airtime Credit Services (ACS), Nano and BNPL.
- As a FinTech company, our business is entirely technology and data driven.
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