Software Engineering Manager

About KOKO Networks
KOKO Networks is a venture-backed climate-tech company with 1,200+ employees across East Africa & India. Our mission is to imagine and deliver technology that improves life in the world’s fastest growing cities. We offer a fast-paced and highly collaborative work environment with significant opportunities for professional growth. Our core lines of business currently include: (1) KOKO Fuel, an ultra-clean liquid bioethanol cooking fuel solution delivered via a network of smart fuel ATMs and leveraging existing downstream liquid fuels infrastructure; (2) KOKO Climate, which retails the emissions reductions that occur from switching households from deforestation-based charcoal to KOKO Fuel; and (3) KOKO Club, a tech-enabled, direct-to-consumer, instant fulfillment retail platform operated in partnership with neighborhood retailers. In 2021, KOKO was selected as the world’s leading emerging markets climate technology solution by FT/IFC.

Your Role

As KOKO grows within and outside Kenya, our team is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to build and manage part of our growing team of engineers, be responsible for ensuring high standards are maintained and projects are successfully executed. As such you will play a key role in enabling KOKO’s long term success, including our expansion beyond to new countries.

In this position, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute and add value across key areas of KOKO's product suite, through individual contribution, and equally importantly through bringing strong leadership and direction.

KOKO’s suite of products spans multiple technical domains and disciplines in software and hardware, and so experience in end-to-end systems thinking across distributed components is key.

What you will do

• You will have responsibility for the activities and output of one or more engineering teams across multiple products, with team leads and other individual contributors reporting to you.
• You will ensure the smooth and predictable execution of complex deliverables in accordance with KOKO’s quality standards across all relevant areas.
• You will define and improve on Engineering KPIs on a periodic basis based on feedback from other stakeholders in the Company
• You will be responsible for continually raising and maintaining engineering standards at their highest levels to enable technology innovation and software delivery.
• You will review technical designs, and ensure they will be scalable and robust.
• You will be responsible for the technical competence of your teams, guiding and growing that competence as necessary via training and hiring.
• You will ensure the use of best practices including code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD across teams and projects, and help others to improve the quality of their work.
• You will define organisational and development roadmaps to align with delivery strategies, to ensure product and business objectives are met, balancing immediate and long-term deliverables with technical debt and strategic technical development.
• You will guide the goal-setting process for their teams, helping them articulate goals that support both business initiatives and technology and organisational quality
• You will contribute to architecture and design efforts and ensure they are well aligned with product and business needs and objectives.
• You will build the engineering culture at KOKO, ensuring it is positioned to attract similar minded people with a passion for using technology to tackle some of the hardest challenges.

KOKO’s current technology stack includes (but is not limited to): AWS, Python, Flask, Vue.js, Postgres, Kotlin, Java, Firebase, Celery, Message Queues, Odoo ERP, Docker, Jenkins, CircleCI, Git

What You Will Bring to KOKO

• Three or more years of experience directly managing software engineers and 8+ years of experience in software engineering overall.
• Strong track record leading, developing, and delivering significant software projects
• Significant experience in the following areas: enterprise application and service based architectures, software design patterns, messaging protocols, cyber security, distributed application development, modern front-end design, highly scalable data architectures.
• Well developed skills in designing for testability, reliability, security and maintainability.
• Evangelist for Agile practices, able to work closely with product leaders to support engineering team members in delivering in an agile manner to achieve key goals.
• Strong communicator, both written and verbal, who is calm and decisive under pressure.
• Empathy for your colleagues, encouraging team members to think creatively while knowing where to intervene to tackle tough problems and navigate conflicts.
• You are strongly motivated by seeing high quality outcomes delivered, and hold yourself personally accountable, jumping in and taking ownership of problems as needed to ensure the desired outcomes.

What we offer

• Competitive salary plus a quarterly cash bonus
• Annual compensation reviews - we reward great work
• Discounted health insurance with no-cost financing for you and your dependents (in Kenya)
• 21 days of annual leave plus public holidays plus examination leave
• Hybrid working model - allowing you to split your time between in-person collaboration at one of our offices and working remotely
• Ongoing investment in you and your skills, incl. full access to over 5,000 online courses
• The right equipment for the job - a choice of MacBook, Windows, or Linux laptop

We believe that our people are critical for our ambitious growth plans in Kenya and beyond. We want to build an organisation where people thrive, feel included, grow professionally, and enjoy having high impact through their work.

If you share our passion for technology and our vision for global impact, we strongly encourage you to apply!

KOKO is committed to gender and racial diversity in the workplace. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply!