Head of Engineering, POS Application Platform

Job Description

Who we are

Moniepoint Inc. is Africa's all-in-one financial platform, helping 20 million businesses and individuals access seamless payments, banking, credit, cross-border, and business management tools each month. As Nigeria's largest merchant acquirer, we power most of the country's point-of-sale (POS) transactions. Through our subsidiaries, Moniepoint Inc. processes over $250 billion in digital payment transaction value annually.

About the role

More than 6 million businesses run their financial lives through Moniepoint — and the primary way they interact with us every single day is through a POS device. For most of our merchants, that device is their business. It is how they accept payments, how they access credit, and how they track their finances. Everything those devices are capable of, in terms of speed, reliability, and developer quality, flows from the engineering platform this role leads.

We are building a dedicated POS Application Platform function: the foundational engineering layer that sits beneath every POS product at Moniepoint. Think of it as the operating system for our POS engineering organisation - the standards, frameworks, tooling, and architectural backbone that every POS engineer across the business builds on top of. This is not a feature team. It is a platform team in the truest sense, and the Head of Engineering for POS Application Platform is the technical owner of that layer.

We currently operate across approximately five POS device types from multiple OEM manufacturers, all running on Android. The engineering challenges here span device governance, developer experience, platform reliability, foundational frameworks, and adoption across a distributed set of POS engineers working in separate product squads.

And the scope is only growing. We have a UK entity live, a cross-border payments product in market, and a microfinance bank acquisition finalizing in Kenya. The platform you build will become the foundation for tens of millions of businesses across multiple markets to accept payments, access financial services, and grow. If you have spent your career going deep on POS systems and you want to build the platform that underpins one of Africa's most consequential fintech businesses during its global expansion, this is the role.

What you'll get to do

• Own the technical strategy and architecture for the POS Application Platform, acting as the domain CTO for everything that runs on our POS devices.
• Build and govern the four core platform pillars across the organisation: developer experience (tools, libraries, SDKs), platform reliability (observability, uptime, quality standards), foundational frameworks (architecture, coding standards, testing and release pipelines), and squad adoption (driving uptake of platform tooling across all embedded POS engineers).
• Define and enforce engineering standards across all POS device types and OEM manufacturers, ensuring architectural consistency and quality across a heterogeneous device fleet.
• Functionally lead POS engineers embedded across Payments, Onboarding, VAS, Savings, and Loans squads — setting the bar for engineering quality and providing the platform layer above all of them.
• Own POS observability end-to-end: monitoring, alerting, and incident response frameworks that ensure platform health across all devices and squads.
• Drive the architecture for how Moniepoint supports multiple POS device types, including defining how new devices are onboarded, governed, and integrated with the platform.
• Collaborate with OEM partners and the POS hardware team when new device types are introduced, ensuring the application layer is ready to support them from day one.
• Write and review code directly — this role expects 40 to 60 percent hands-on engineering time. You will set the technical standard, not just the technical direction.
• Build and scale the POS platform team, including hiring, mentoring, and structuring for growth as the platform expands internationally.
• Translate platform decisions into business impact, working closely with Product, Payments, and Business leadership across markets.
• Establish and continuously improve engineering processes, tooling standards, CI/CD pipelines, and developer productivity metrics across the POS engineering community.

To succeed in this role, we think you should have

• A minimum of 10 years of hands-on software engineering experience, with at least 6 years leading engineering teams through meaningful growth phases, ideally in multi-national or large VC-backed companies.
• Direct, hands-on experience building software that runs on Point-of-Sale terminal devices. This means engineering on the device itself — the application layer — not server-side integrations with POS systems. This is a non-negotiable requirement and candidates without it will not be considered.
• Strong working knowledge of EMV standards (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) and experience navigating payment certification processes such as PCI DSS and P2PE. Candidates without this will not be considered.
• Deep Android engineering expertise in Kotlin and Java. The POS application layer at Moniepoint is Android-based and there are no exceptions to this requirement.
• Proven experience building internal engineering platforms, shared libraries, developer tooling, or foundational frameworks used by other engineering teams — not just consumer-facing feature products.
• Experience governing or architecting across multiple POS device types from different hardware manufacturers, with an understanding of how OEM integrations and device management work at scale.
• A track record of hands-on technical leadership at a meaningful frequency — a 40 to 60 percent coding ratio in your current or most recent role is what we expect. If you have moved into a fully managerial role with no direct contribution to code, this role is likely not the right fit.
• Experience building or maturing platform engineering functions, including establishing engineering processes, tooling strategies, and cross-squad governance structures.
• Demonstrated ability to scale engineering teams and build the organisational layer beneath you — leaders who can grow into and around the role you are hiring into.
• Experience at a company processing high volumes of financial transactions in a regulated environment. Fintech background is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with terminal management systems and device observability tooling is a strong advantage.
• Backend engineering experience in Java or Spring Boot is a strong plus given the breadth of the platform and the integration surface it sits on.
• Experience working directly with OEM vendors on hardware specification and integration is a bonus.
• Exposure to C or C++ is a plus — one of our device variants uses C.
• Experience at Series A or B stage startups alone is unlikely to reflect the scale and complexity required for this role.

Cultural Alignment

We assess every candidate across eight dimensions that define how great leaders operate at Moniepoint. We look for evidence of all eight throughout the process, not just in a single conversation.

• Customer Obsession: Deep empathy for the people depending on the platform — whether that is a merchant in Lagos trying to accept a payment, or a POS engineer blocked by missing tooling. You solve problems quickly and intuitively. You close loops by fixing root causes, not just tickets.
• Craft: You have mastered your domain at the fundamentals level. You make trade-offs explicit, reason from first principles, and consistently produce solutions that are better than typical.
• Systemisation: You convert recurring decisions into repeatable mechanisms. You reduce cognitive load for others. You strengthen institutional memory and improve engineering quality at scale.
• Urgency: You move with disciplined speed. You act without waiting for permission when you are within scope. You escalate early when risk exceeds your authority. You remove friction and close loops.
• Ownership: You treat the platform as yours to solve regardless of job description boundaries. You take responsibility without being asked. You follow through on commitments without being reminded.
• No Ego: You put the mission ahead of personal status. You credit others genuinely, welcome challenge, and never protect your position at the expense of collective outcomes.
• Candour: You surface reality early, clearly, and completely — especially when it is uncomfortable. You name risks before they become crises. Intelligent failure is acceptable; concealment is not.
• Integrity: Truthfulness and ethical consistency in everything. You adhere to rules and obligations. You never perform under intimidation or corrosive behaviour. Performance without integrity is unacceptable.

Some of the technologies you'll work with

• Android (Kotlin, Java) — primary platform for all POS application development
• EMV payment standards and PCI/P2PE certification frameworks
• Multiple POS device types and OEM manufacturers, including Topwise and Telpo
• Terminal management systems and device observability tooling
• Java, Spring Boot — backend services and integration layer
• Docker and Kubernetes
• PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch
• Microservices architecture on AWS

What we can offer you

• Culture - We put our people first and prioritise the well-being of every team member. We have built a company where all opinions carry weight and where all voices are heard. We value and respect each other and always look out for one another. Above all, we are human.
• Learning - We have a learning and development-focused environment with an emphasis on knowledge sharing, training, and regular internal technical talks.
• Compensation - You will receive an attractive salary, pension, health insurance, annual bonus, plus other benefits.

What to expect in the hiring process

• Stage 1: A preliminary phone call with one of our recruiters.
• Stage 2: System Design - You will be asked to solve complex system design problems to assess your technical and architectural skills, with a particular focus on POS platform architecture and payment systems.
• Stage 3: Technical and Architectural Leadership - A panel interview with two of our Heads of Engineering, assessing your depth in POS platform architecture, EMV systems, developer platform design, and engineering leadership at scale.
• Stage 4: PM/Cultural Fit and Leadership - Explore your leadership qualities, cultural fit, and your approach to building high-performing, inclusive engineering organisations.
• Stage 5: CTO Interview - A conversation with our CTO assessing first-principles thinking, problem-solving under ambiguity, clarity of thought, and cultural alignment.

How to apply: Please send us your CV or LinkedIn profile via our career website.

Moniepoint is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and candidates!

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