Technology Team Lead – YD Pay (Hands-On)

Reporting: Group CTO

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Role Purpose

Lead the hands-on delivery and operations of YD Pay’s crypto exchange/mobile app within KHM’s group architecture, security, and compliance guardrails. You will code, review, ship, and run services in production, coordinating closely with shared SRE/DevOps, SecOps, Data, and QA teams.

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Outcomes (first 6–12 months)

• T+90 days: Stabilize core services on AWS; CI/CD with automated tests; base SLOs and on-call runbooks; DR run     validated.
• T+180 days: Lead, mentor, and contribute to the growth of a team of software engineers, DevOps engineers, and QA     professionals; wallet ops with HSM/multi-sig; ≤30-min MTTR for P1; ≥99.9%     uptime.
• T+365 days: Multi-AZ/region     readiness; cost-to-serve optimized (−10% vs. baseline); audit-ready     change/incident trails; performance targets met under peak load.

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Key Responsibilities

Delivery & Engineering (≈50%)

• Build/maintain backend (Node.js/NestJS) and APIs; review PRs; mentor by pairing; own critical paths (auth, payments, orders, wallets).
• Collaborate with FE (React/TS) for end-to-end features; ensure API/contract quality and performance budgets.
• Implement reference architectures from CTO office; contribute improvements back to group standards.

Platform Operations (≈25%)

• Operate services on AWS (EKS/ECS, RDS, S3, CloudFront, IAM, KMS); IaC with Terraform/Cloud Formation.
• Define and hit SLOs; observability with Prometheus/Grafana/CloudWatch; on-call rotation; incident response and     post mortems.
• Execute DR/BCP (AWS primary, on-prem DR); conduct failover tests; optimize reliability/cost (rightsizing, autoscaling).

Security & Compliance (≈15%)

• Enforce secure SDLC, secrets mgmt, key custody (HSM), encryption at rest/in transit, least privilege, change control.
• Implement KYC/AML workflows (Sumsub/Comply Advantage/Chainalysis); data residency and retention aligned     to NDPA/POPIA.
• Maintain audit artefacts (access, change, incident logs); support CTO-led regulatory submissions.

People & Vendors (≈10%)

• Day-to-day tasking and coaching of BU engineers (with GroupQA/SRE/SecOps/Data).
• Manage vendor integrations (fiat rails/mobile money, payment gateways, blockchain nodes) to SLA.
• Capacity planning and delivery forecasting for the BU.

Must-Have Experience

• 5+ years of software development experience with at least 2+ years in hands-on technical leadership     roles
• 5+ years building and running production services (preferably fintech/crypto/payments).
• Strong Node.js/NestJS, API design, SQL (Postgres), caching (Redis), eventing/WebSockets; React/TS collaboration.
• AWS production ops (networking, IAM/KMS, RDS, EKS/ECS), CI/CD (GitHub Actions/Jenkins/GitLab), containers/Kubernetes.
• Observability, on-call, incident management; IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation).
• Integrations: KYC/AML providers, payment rails (incl. mobile money), blockchain nodes/wallets, webhooks/queues.

Preferred Qualifications and Nice-to-Haves

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or similar.
• Experience with blockchain node infrastructure (Bitcoin Core, Geth, Tron nodes).
• Knowledge of smart contracts and Web3 technologies.
• Experience with payment processing systems and fiat on/off-ramp integrations.
• Familiarity with compliance technology (Sumsub, ComplyAdvantage, Chainalysis, or similar).
• Multi-region patterns, data localization; HSM integration;  PCI-DSS awareness; performance/load testing at scale.
• Understanding of African fintech and Nigeria market specifics.

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