Senior Cloud Engineer

Who are we

Kora is the marketplace for everything payments. We offer a robust payment API for payment collections, disbursements and conversions for businesses anywhere in Africa. 

Our vision, which is at the core of what we do every day, is to create a world void of digital financial barriers. We are committed to delivering reliable, secure, and easy-to-use digital financial solutions to every single customer with a guarantee that it is improving their lives. To achieve this mission, we need people like you. 

We strongly believe in our ability to find Water in the Desert and pick the Sands in the Ocean.

We value positive energy, and clear communication and are committed to building an inclusive environment for people from every background.

About the role

As a payments infrastructure that enables small and large businesses to make and accept payments, we need to achieve and maintain high standards for security, reliability, and availability. This is essential to our goal of delighting businesses and their customers. This is why we are looking for a Senior Cloud Engineer.

As we increase our product offerings and scale across regions within and outside Africa, the need for a secure, resilient, and reliable infrastructure becomes even more critical. This role presents a unique opportunity to design and implement a modern cloud infrastructure that provides value to businesses at any scale.

As a Senior Cloud Engineer at Kora, you will be focusing on optimizing our payment infrastructure and ensuring high availability, scalability, and security of the system, and improving our software development and delivery process, including automation, CI/CD pipelines, and collaboration between teams, streamlining the development workflows that enable faster and more efficient software releases.

Requirements

Here’s what you’ll be doing

• Designing, implementing, and maintaining scalable, available, and fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure on AWS and Azure.
• Working with the Security team to design and implement a secure cloud infrastructure.
• Managing and securing access control to cloud resources using best practices.
• Effectively using observability and/or monitoring tools to get relevant insights to build a performant infrastructure that powers our payment solutions.
• Creating and maintaining deployment pipelines and infrastructure as code.
• Building and maintaining CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines for software delivery.
• Automating build, testing, and deployment processes to enable faster and more reliable software releases.
• Collaborating with development teams to improve the software development process and implement best practices.
• Deciding on and putting into practice the safest and quickest method for getting code from development to production.

What you’ll need

• 4+ years of experience working as a Cloud Engineer or DevOps Engineer.
• Expertise in deploying and scaling applications on the cloud, ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, and security.
• Sound knowledge of the following cloud technologies and their services – AWS, Azure
• Strong understanding of cloud-native technologies and services, such as Docker for containerization and Kubernetes for orchestration.
• Proficiency in infrastructure automation using tools like Terraform or CloudFormation.
• Proficiency in configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Chef, or Puppet) to ensure consistent and reproducible environments.
• Understanding of the concept of observability, how it can be effectively implemented, and how critical it is to managing software at scale.
• Experience using observability tools or platforms such as Datadog.
• Understanding of the security best practices and compliance requirements, such as SOC2, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS is a plus.
• A strong desire to give our merchants a great experience using our payment infrastructure.
• Being a strong communicator with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• The ability to work in a collaborative environment, as well as independently.

Reporting Structure – This role reports to the Chief Technology officer (CTO)

Interview process 

Below is the interview process you can expect for this role. It may look like a lot of steps, but rest assured that we move quickly and the steps are designed to help you get the information needed to determine if we’re the right fit for you… Interviewing is a two-way street, after all! 

We expect the interview process to take a maximum of 3 weeks and an average of 2.5 hours in total. Please note that the interview is virtual.

Introduction Stage – we have initial conversations to get acquainted with you and overall experience.

[15m] Recruiter Screen – Abayomi Ishmael 

Project Review –  The Engineering team 

Feedback from the Recruiter (Abayomi Ishmael)

‍ [60m] Team Interview Stage (Engineering team) – We proceed to explore your professional background in greater detail and facilitate introductions to team members, including those from various cross-functional areas.

[60m] Cultural Fit Interview (Our Core Values) – At this stage, you’ll engage in a conversation with Kora’s COO, the Head of People and Culture, and the head of the team you’re being considered for. The aim is to understand you better and assess the alignment of your beliefs and values with Kora’s distinctive culture. We’d like to emphasize that there are no right or wrong answers expected. However, we encourage you to maintain a positive attitude during this session.

Please note that you are welcome to ask questions and inquire during this process. We assure you of complete transparency throughout the interview process.

Working hours

Given that we are an all-remote company and hire almost anywhere in the world, we don’t have a location requirement for this role. However, your working hours must coincide with 9:00 am – 5:00 pm WAT for at least 40 hours/week.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Kora is an equal-opportunity opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. All employment decisions are based on qualifications, experience, and business needs. We strongly encourage applications from underrepresented communities and diverse ethnic groups to apply.

Please feel free to inform us if you need any accommodations to facilitate your participation in the recruitment process. Any details you share will be used solely to ensure we can support and accommodate your needs appropriately

If you require more information on our HR Data Privacy, please visit here

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Sponsored and tailored training
• Paid parental Leave
• Paid time-off
• Flexible work style
• Annual performance bonus
• Low-interest loans
• Employee assisted programs
• Day off on your birthday
• Employee resource groups that provide supportive communities within Kora
• Great company culture and the opportunity to work with a highly collaborative team building something great!

Note: We recognize imposter syndrome is real – any candidate who does not perfectly fit every characteristic of this role is still strongly encouraged to apply.