Java Backend Engineering Team Lead

What if the only thing standing between a donor’s funding and a girl’s success was a smarter way to verify impact? We’re building Imara Impact, a new line of business at Tiko designed to revolutionise outcomes-based financing. We need a Java Engineer Team Lead to build the engine that turns data from the field into the confidence donors need to change lives. 

About Tiko 
Tiko is an African nonprofit committed to strengthening the potential and resilience of adolescent girls across Africa. We address the “Triple Threat” of unintended pregnancy, HIV infection, and sexual and gender-based violence by building local health ecosystems that provide stigma-free, no-cost, quality-assured services.

We operate in six countries: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and Nigeria, with additional offices in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. For a clear overview of our work, we recommend watching this short video.

Globally, our team consists of +250 enthusiastic, international colleagues. Whether you are working from our biggest office in Nairobi, the fast-growing office in South Africa, or from home, our people are young, and our culture is global and dynamic. Our work environment is fast-paced, informal, and friendly. 

About Imara Impact
Imara Impact is a transformative initiative incubated by Tiko to revolutionize the social impact sector. Our mission is to move significant capital into the urgent causes affecting women and girls by solving a massive global problem: Outcome-Based Financing is currently too slow, too expensive, and too complex.

Today, "paying for outcomes" (ensuring funds are only released when real-life results are verified) involves years of legal work and massive transaction costs. Imara is building the tech-enabled, end-to-end solution that fixes this. We are creating a platform that reduces complexity and utilizes AI-driven verification to make outcome funding affordable, transparent, and accessible for governments, foundations, and individual donors alike.

As an engineer at Imara, you won’t just be building features; you will be engineering the "trust infrastructure" that ensures every dollar reaches the front lines, empowering community-led organizations to deliver hyper-proximate interventions for the women and girls who need them most.

Key Engineering Pillars

• Financial Infrastructure for Outcomes: Developing a "single-contract" FinTech solution that aligns with government procurement needs while allowing for flexible reallocation of capital across geographies.
  
• AI-Driven Verification & Fraud Prevention: Utilizing AI and the proven Tiko platform to automate data collection and verify real-world impact, replacing manual, high-cost auditing with real-time, high-integrity data.
  
• Ecosystem-Scale Architecture: Building a platform designed to serve the entire sector, going beyond Tiko to support a wide range of organizations and funders in a unified, transparent ecosystem.
  
• Data Integrity for Social Good: Managing sensitive health and educational data with the highest security standards, ensuring that "paying for what works" becomes the global standard for philanthropy.

For this position, we are happily looking for candidates currently based in Portugal, South Africa, and Kenya

The Job

Our Java Engineering Team Lead is responsible for leading and developing a team of software engineers and creating and maintaining the Imara Impact software. Other responsibilities include:

• Lead and develop the individuals in your team.
• Design, develop, and maintenance of new features on the Imara Impact software.
  
• Our team works in an agile way, and you will be part of the rituals and practices.
• Coordination of the work that the software engineering team need to do.
• Applying software engineering principles to the design, development, maintenance, testing, and evaluation of our software.

• Ensuring that the software you develop is secure and safe when it comes to data protection.
  
• You document your work and make sure that your documentation is clear and understandable for future use by others.

About You

You have in-depth development experience using Java and building software from the ground up. You’re a logical thinker and a natural problem solver who wants to use your technical skillset to make an impact.

Requirements:  

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience focused on JVM languages
• 3+ years of formal leadership experience managing a team of Java backend engineers, including responsibility for conducting team performance reviews
• Experience within Microservices and AWS  
• You have extensive experience working with the Spring framework, as well as various other Java backend tools and frameworks
• Experience or knowledge of Salesforce CRM would be a plus
• You don’t want to just write code, you want to build scalable systems with quality
• You are based in Portugal, Kenya or South Africa
• You have excellent English skills
  
  

Recruitment Process

Introductory call with recruiter | First Interview with Tech Team | Technical Challenge | Final interview with the Tech Team

The Rewards

The gross monthly salary brackets for this position are:
Kenya: Ksh444,178 - Ksh740,000 (x12)

South Africa: R88,008 - R146,600 (x12)
Portugal: €3,660 - €6,100  (x14)

We will offer you a salary in this bracket depending on your level of experience and how it relates to your future colleagues. 

In addition to your monthly salary, we offer you:

• Benefits and allowances tailored to your location.
• Flexible work arrangements, including remote or hybrid options.
• A personal development budget of €500 per year to invest in your professional growth 
• Unlimited holiday days to use as you see fit - just coordinate with your team and take the time you need to recharge.
• The opportunity to shape a growing, impactful product and leave your mark on how we work
• A culture built on trust - we believe you’ll do your best without the need for unnecessary rules or micromanagement

The details

Interested? Click Apply for This Job! Want more information? Check out our website tiko.org or contact our Global Recruiter. We only accept applications through the apply links, not by email.

Important Recruitment Fraud Alert
Please be aware that Tiko maintains a professional and ethical recruitment process.

• Zero Fees: We do not charge candidates any fees for applications, interviews, or processing at any stage of the hiring journey.
• Fraud Prevention: If you receive a request for money, bank details, or "onboarding equipment" payments from someone claiming to represent us, this is not a legitimate request.
• Official Channels: We only communicate through our verified company email domain (@tiko.org).

If you are approached by anyone asking for payment in our name, please ignore the request.

—
Tiko prioritizes integrity in our workplace and respects your privacy.

Tiko is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behaviour by its employees at work, including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct. This is why we will do reference and background screening checks on successful candidates before hiring. Tiko also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. As part of this scheme, we will request information from your previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during your employment, or incidents under investigation when you left employment. By applying for this position, you confirm you have read and understood these recruitment procedures.

We value your privacy and understand the importance of safeguarding your personal data. We invite you to review our privacy notice for the recruitment process to understand how we collect, use, and protect your personal data during the recruitment process. Click here
to view the document. By applying for this position, you acknowledge that you have read and understood our privacy notice.