Technical Lead

About Yoco

Yoco is an African technology company that builds tools and services to help small businesses get paid, run their business better, and grow. We believe that by opening up more possibilities for entrepreneurs to be successful, we can help create more jobs, enable people to thrive and help to drive our economy forward.

Furthermore, here you can check out the story of our Cape Town office and our staff story with Nick Jacobs, a senior full stack software engineer at Yoco.

Official website

Position

We are a team of Software Engineers and Product professionals who have effective relationships with many satisfied customers. We are committed to understanding the FinTech sector and improving payment processes for SMB’s.

We are wanting a collaborative and skilled Technical Lead who is passionate about customers, delivering high quality products, building robust solutions and can be both a technical champion and a mentor to a medium-sized team of like-minded individuals.

We’re a diverse and zealous team, committed to constructing some of the world's leading finance technology products, while providing an unparalleled experience to our customers. If you're passionate about adding new value to a robust team and diverse group of customers, have a love for all things tech and wanting to learn and be challenged, we are the company to join.

Key responsibilities:

• Being a highly technical, hands-on and effective manager for a team of 4 - 6 engineers  
• Writing code for our mobile and web applications using React, NodeJS, React Native and Redux (with some gentle sprinkles of Objective C and Java as required)
• Building APIs and services on our back-end using Scala and PostgreSQL
• Developing and managing a team of talented Engineers, including task planning and code reviews
• Supporting and leading others who are doing the same
• Working with our Product Management(s) as well as our design and UX minds to insure that we deliver continuous value to our growing base of customers
• Doing the hard and complicated to make it easier and simple
• Be an active participant in the decision-making and planning of new features we will build, and how they are architected and implemented
• Drive and lead the release and QA cycles of the teams code

Your qualification

Who you are:

• You are happy writing both back-end code and doing some front-end work on Web and Mobile applications
• Feeling a sense of excitement when offering input and contributing to the broader product discussion
• Proven ability in taking a feature or product all the way from conception to completion and release
• Nature, mould and lead junior developers 
• You feel empowered by learning new things and using modern technology
• You are excellent at solving complicated problems, understanding real world issues and delivering high performance software
• You can deliver stable yet flexible software that allows us to iterate quickly in order to deliver features
• You build re-usable solutions that others can use to avoid re-inventing the wheel every time

Key requirements to perform responsibilities:

• 6 - 8 years as a professional Software Engineer
• BSc Computer Science or equivalent is highly encouraged
• Experience with both back-end and front-end development
• SQL database experience
• A clear, real passion for software engineering
• Demonstrated ability to recruit and lead technical teams, including performance management
• Strong ability to work independently while still being collaborative and inclusive

Will be a plus

• Experience with JavaScript, React or React-Native
• Experience in Java, Scala, Kotlin or any other JVM language
• Knowledge of multiple programming languages
• Mobile development experience
• Experience leading teams, designing and architecting products, working with customers
• Experience in the payments industry

What we offer

As part of the Yoco team, you will play a key role in the growth of the mobile Point of Sale opportunity in South Africa.

To support this we have built a role-based organisation; where every individual is given the space to focus and develop his or her innate strengths. Everyone here has the opportunity to lead a project and become a specialist, enabling flexibility, collaboration and accountability at all levels.

You will join a company that offers a competitive package for an early stage venture and have an employee benefit structure, with flexible working hours and a generous leave policy.

We encourage specialisation of your skill set, continuous learning and collaborative ways of working. We support career development, work-life balance and family life, creativity, authenticity and transparency.

Additional details

Expectations of Yoco Employees 

Dealing with People

• Communicating & influencing: Strong communication skills across various mediums, building collaborative relationships internally and externally

Dealing with Business

• Preventing & solving problems: Diagnostic information gathering and research, analytical thinking, application of conceptual thinking to problem-solving 
• Achieving results: Proactive/initiative, customer orientated, fostering innovation, continuous improvement mindset, appreciation of results, business acumen, thoroughness and detail orientated

Dealing with Self-management

• Self-confidence, personal credibility, flexibility, adaptability and strong sense of personal accountability

Life at Yoco - Company Video