Senior Backend Engineer

Boost is a global platform that powers FMCG manufacturers and last-mile distribution networks with radically easy technology and growth services.

Boost’s Platform-as-a-Service offering includes:

• WhatsApp ordering to grow sales and serve more retailers with less effort;

• An offline-enabled sales app for sales reps to manage their customers;

• A fully-featured fulfilment platform with end-to-end visibility; and

• Digital payment and credit solutions in partnership with Mastercard.

We are currently scaling across markets and channels through strategic partnerships with Unilever and Mastercard, with more in the pipeline.

About the Role

Boost is searching for exceptional candidates to level up our backend engineering team. We’re looking for individuals who are equally motivated by crafting Pythonic code as they are by creating delightful user experiences.

You’ll join a small, high-performing team building commerce and fintech products for the FMCG sector, working directly with experienced co-founders across Africa and beyond.

This is a unique opportunity to join an incredible team in a purpose-driven startup!

What You Will Do

Your job, in collaboration with others in the product and engineering teams, will be to write elegant, performant, and well-tested code that improves our products in meaningful ways.

You will be expected to contribute to features, bug fixes, tests, and infrastructure code alike, through both software and systems engineering. Internally, you will also be a crucial link between Boost country teams and the thousands of informal sector retailers served by our customers in order to upskill internal teams’ technical knowledge of the product.

This role reports to Boost’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

1. Write elegant, performant, and well-tested code

   You will work side-by-side with the product and engineering teams to ship new—and improve existing—code:

   • Work to understand the wider purpose of each feature you work on.

   • Define, communicate, and execute on a clear plan for your work, while ensuring any unclear expectations are clarified.

   • Scope larger features down into smaller, actionable items of work.

   • Strive to reduce technical debt and communicate larger refactors.

   • Support the work of your peers through pairing, reviewing, and mentoring.

   • Prepare clean and well-written pull requests, and help to ship your work.

   • Actively participate in broader engineering efforts.

   • Raise the bar for customer experience!

2. Enable the engineering team to make better decisions

   We work in a collaborative way—and as a member of the Platform team, you will be in one of the best positions to promote collaboration, learning, and prioritisation across teams.

   • Contribute to the Platform roadmap and prioritisation.

   • Work closely with in-country product teams to better understand product requests and ensure requirements are well written and understood.

What You Have

• 5+ years’ experience in a relevant field

• A deep knowledge of Python and the ability to write clear and Pythonic code.

• Strong AI expertise and an AI-first mindset, with the judgment to know when to guide closely and when to delegate.

• Experience working with relational databases and SQL (any dialect is fine, but we work with PostgreSQL).

• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (we use AWS).

• Relevant experience in a similar role, preferably within a fast-growing startup.

• Openness to others’ ideas with a shared desire to understand and communicate the purpose of the work.

Who You Are

• Keen, bright, and your superpower is curiosity.

• Comfortable in a fast-paced environment and with a passion for learning from and delighting customers

• Someone with an engineering, mathematical, or scientific background.

• Someone who supports the work of their peers through pair programming, reviewing, and mentoring.

• Someone who adjusts well to shifting priorities when necessary.

• Someone who loves to share what they’re learning and working remotely.

• Someone who is a great communicator and loves to build bridges between people with different backgrounds and cultures—and in different locations.

• Motivated by our mission, resonates with our virtues and principles, and ambitious to grow into a larger future role.

Boost virtues

These virtues should strongly resonate with you and are the foundations of the company we will build together:

• Be purpose-driven: You should be motivated by the potential to enable informal retailers to thrive in the digital economy.

• Be tenacious: When faced with adversity, you relentlessly persevere until you find a solution.

• Be compassionate: You are able to empathise with others to feel their pain and then take actionable steps to deliver solutions that alleviate it.

• Be whole: You live to work and achieve results, but you take care of your well-being.

• Be good: You are always your honest, authentic self who does the right thing, even when under pressure.