Lead Backend Engineer

Who Are We? Thndr was founded with the dream to democratize access to investing through smart tech and human design, which is just a fancy way of saying giving anyone with a smartphone easy access to preserve and grow their wealth. At the same time, we’re promoting local investment products to propel the economies that we serve
History has shown that investing is the single greatest way to build long term wealth - but before Thndr, only a very small percentage of people had access to investing due to:

• High barriers to entry - In the form of minimum account balances, brick and mortar onboarding and low financial literacy.
• Irrelevant experience - Catered towards traders and financial experts, therefore alienating the majority of the population.
• Fragmented offering - Investment products are not gathered in a single outlet.

On our short journey we’ve validated that there is a need for our solution, as illustrated by these key figures:

• 3 million app downloads
• $8.8bn in annualized traded value
• #1 platform in terms of traded value
• 84% of our users are investing for the first time
• 65% of our users come from outside of capital cities and have previously had limited access to financial institutions

We’re proud of how far we’ve come and the size of our impact in just a few years - but we’re just getting started and are excited for what’s to come.
It’ll take a lot of passion, bold risks, and hard work to fulfill our mission of democratizing investing in MENA and giving everyone an equal opportunity to generate and grow their wealth.
What You'll Do

• Technical Leadership: As a Lead Backend Engineer, you will be responsible for leading the technical direction of the backend engineering team. You will be responsible for making technical decisions, designing architecture, and ensuring that the team is delivering high-quality code.
• Design and Architecture: You will be responsible for designing and implementing the architecture for backend systems that meet the needs of the business. This includes working with other engineers to design and develop APIs, microservices, and other backend systems.
• Code Reviews: You will be responsible for ensuring that the code being developed by the backend team is of the highest quality. This includes performing code reviews, testing, and debugging to ensure that the code meets the requirements and is free of bugs.
• Development and Delivery Workflows: You will be responsible for driving improvements in the team's development experience and workflow, with a focus on Continuous Delivery, streamlining processes, implementing advanced tools, and mentoring team members to ensure a culture of efficiency and collaboration.
• Collaboration: You will work closely with other engineers, product managers, and stakeholders to ensure that the backend systems are meeting the needs of the business. You will work collaboratively to identify requirements, prioritize work, and ensure that the backend systems are delivering value to the business.
• Mentorship: As a Lead Backend Engineer, you will be responsible for mentoring and coaching other engineers on the team. This includes guiding on technical issues, code reviews, and career development.
• Continuous Improvement: You will be responsible for continuously improving the backend systems, processes, and tools used by the team. This includes identifying areas for improvement, proposing solutions, and implementing changes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the backend systems.
• Security: You will be responsible for collaborating with the Security team, ensuring that the backend systems are secure and that data is protected. This includes implementing security best practices, performing security audits, and staying up to date on the latest security threats and vulnerabilities.
• Performance and Scalability: You will be responsible for ensuring that the backend systems are performant and can scale to meet the needs of the business. This includes optimizing code, performing load testing, and designing systems that can handle high traffic volumes.

What You'll Need

• Education: A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field is preferred.
• Experience: Typically, a minimum of 5 to 8 years of experience in software development, with at least 3-5 years of experience in backend development, is required. Experience in a leadership role.
• Technical Skills: 
  • Deep understanding of microservices architecture principles, including service decomposition, inter-service communication, and resilience patterns like circuit breakers and retries.
  • Proficiency in Kubernetes for container orchestration, including deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications, as well as knowledge of Kubernetes networking and storage.
  • Knowledge of distributed systems concepts such as CAP theorem, eventual consistency, and distributed tracing for designing and developing scalable and fault-tolerant backend services.
  • Expertise in backend programming languages such as Java, Python, Go, or Node.js, as well as frameworks like Spring Boot, Django, Flask, or Express.js for building scalable and resilient microservices.
  • Experience with multiple database types including relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, Timescale), and data streaming solutions (e.g., Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ) for storing and processing data in distributed environments.
  • Proficiency in designing and developing RESTful APIs and asynchronous messaging protocols like AMQP for communication between microservices.
  • Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform for automating the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources.
  • Experience in setting up and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
  • Knowledge of monitoring and observability concepts and tools.
  • Ability to optimize the performance and scalability of microservices through techniques like caching, load balancing, horizontal scaling, and database sharding.
  • Understanding of DevOps principles and practices for collaboration between development and operations teams, including continuous integration, continuous deployment, and infrastructure automation.
• Architecture and Design: Experience designing and implementing complex backend systems. You should be familiar with RESTful APIs, Cloud Native design patterns, distributed systems, database internals, microservices architecture, and other cloud design patterns.
• Leadership and Communication: Strong leadership skills and ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders. You should be able to mentor and coach other engineers and work collaboratively with other teams.
• Problem Solving: Strong problem-solving skills and ability to identify and resolve complex technical issues.
• Continuous Learning: Commitment to continuous learning and staying up-to-date with the latest technologies and industry trends.

At Thndr, we’re looking for people invigorated by our mission, not just those who simply check off all the boxes. We’re looking for people that are hungry to become agents of change and who understand the huge responsibility associated with dealing with people’s money.