Scala Engineer Team Lead

Do you love working with functional programming languages and want to make an impact with your tech skills & knowledge? If yes, read on to find out more about our Scala Engineer Team Lead position! 

The Company

Tiko inspires futures where girls and young women take charge of their sexual and reproductive choices, with the freedom to shape their lives. Founded in 2014, Tiko is an African nonprofit organisation that enhances the potential and fosters the resilience of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Sub-Saharan Africa by addressing the critical “Triple Threat”: early pregnancy, HIV, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Tiko has developed its own unique girl-centric technology platform to unite an ecosystem of existing, established partners to provide an environment enabling girls to choose when, where and how they meet their health and wellbeing needs. Leveraging this technology-enabled, community-driven approach, Tiko collaborates with local and national health systems to drive sustainable, transformative change. Tiko operates in seven countries including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria.

Tiko has offices in South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Netherlands and Portugal. Globally, our team consists of +230 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. You can learn more about what being part of Tiko is like here.

We are open to remote work for this position and will happily accept applicants from Portugal, Kenya, and South Africa.

The Job

We’re looking for a Scala Software Engineer Team Lead to guide a talented engineering team while remaining hands-on in building the software that powers our platform. In this key role, you'll balance technical contributions with team management, helping shape the direction of our products and the growth of our developers.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate and Collaborate: You’ll lead the planning and coordination of your team’s work, ensuring smooth delivery of features and improvements. You’ll also play an active role in cross-functional projects, collaborating with teams across the organization.
• Build and Improve Software: You’ll design, develop, test, and maintain the core features of our platform. Using best practices in software engineering, you’ll ensure our codebase remains robust, scalable, and efficient.
• Embrace Agile: We work in an agile environment, and you’ll be part of our regular rituals, planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, and more helping drive continuous improvement in our processes.
• Keep Things Clear: You’ll create and maintain clear, concise documentation to support your work and ensure it can be easily understood and used by others in the future.
• Prioritize Security: You’ll build software with security and data protection at the forefront, aligning with best practices to safeguard our users and their information.
• Lead and Mentor: You’ll support the growth and development of your team, offering guidance, mentorship, and regular feedback. We also value your own development—so we’ll support your learning journey too.
• Get Involved: You’ll contribute to projects beyond your immediate scope, offering help, sharing knowledge, and collaborating wherever needed to support the success of the wider team.

About you

You have solid, in-depth experience developing in Scala and building software from the ground up. You’re passionate about functional programming, take pride in writing clean, high-quality code, and care deeply about using your technical and people skills to make a positive impact.

Requirements:  

• 8 years of experience in software development 
• 3 years of experience managing a team of backend developers
• Deep understanding and hands-on experience with functional programming principles in Scala
• Experience within Microservices and AWS  
• You have extensive experience working with cats, cats effects, as well as various other Scala backend tools and frameworks
• You don’t want to just write code, you want to build scalable systems with quality
• You are based in Portugal/South Africa/Kenya
• 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

At Tiko we believe in being open, also when it comes to salaries. The monthly salary bracket for this position is €3,590 - €5,500 gross in Portugal (x14), R84,220 - R130,000 gross in South Africa, Ksh427,0960 - Ksh655,000 gross in Kenya, plus benefits. 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:

• Comprehensive benefits and allowances based on location.
• Flexible work arrangements, including remote or hybrid options where applicable.
• A personal development budget of €500 to support professional growth, including training, certifications, and career advancement opportunities.
• Unlimited holidays – as long as you coordinate with your team, you’re good to go!
• The chance to shape a growing and impactful product and leave your mark on how we do things.
• A vision that we trust that you will do your job without us having to invent unnecessary rules and regulations.
  

The Details

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

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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.