Backend Engineer

1. Role Title & Level

Backend Engineer

Level: Senior (6+ years of experience)

2.

Engagement Summary

·

**Engagement

Type:** Contract / Secondment

·

**Squad

Context:** Embedded within the Visa–client joint Tech

Squad; responsible for backend development, host changes, operational

processes, and integration support across all initiatives

·

**Expected

Duration:** [12 months]

·

**Primary

Location:** [Nairobi, Kenya] — Expectation of days in

the office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager

·

**Sprint

Cadence:** Fortnightly agile sprints

·

**Reporting

Line:** [Reports to Technical Program Manager, TPM]

3. Role Purpose

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer

to play a critical role in building solutions. The engineer will take

responsibility for backend domains or major features and drive them end-to-end

from design through delivery. You will be a valued member of a collaborative

team, working closely with crossfunctional stakeholders to translate business

requirements into robust technical solutions.

4.

Key Responsibilities

·

Design

and implement backend changes required for Tokenisation, including token

service enrollment flows, host system changes, and operational backend

processes.

·

Develop

and integrate CYBS (CyberSource) service backend components into the M-Pesa

payment stack, following agreed integration architecture.

·

Implement

backend support for push provisioning app enhancements, including secure token

storage, provisioning state management, and notification services.

Supporting Responsibilities

·

Build

and maintain logging, monitoring, and alerting infrastructure for all

initiative-specific backend services, ensuring operational visibility pre- and

post-production launch.

·

Execute

and support backend functional testing, including integration tests, regression

suites, and performance benchmarking; log and remediate defects to agreed SLAs.

·

Collaborate

with team on end-to-end integration design, ensuring backend services expose

well-formed, documented APIs.

·

Support

knowledge transfer by co-authoring technical runbooks, system design

documentation, and onboarding guides for client engineering counterparts.

5. Measurable Outcomes & Deliverables

First 30 Days

·

Development

environment fully configured; access to relevant codebases, repositories, and

sandbox environments confirmed.

·

Map

all backend service dependencies across Tokenisation, Visa Direct, CYBS, and

push provisioning into a shared dependency register.

·

Attend

all Scrum ceremonies and contribute to sprint planning with estimated, clearly

scoped backend tasks

·

Logging

and monitoring baseline agreed; instrumentation plan drafted.

Days 31–60

·

Tokenization

host changes implemented and validated in sandbox; functional test cases

passing.

·

Visa

Direct backend configuration and transaction processing components built and

tested in sandbox.

·

CYBS

backend integration components developed; unit and integration test coverage on

new code.

·

Monitoring

and alerting hooks operational for at least one initiative; alert thresholds

configured.

Days 61–90

·

Tokenization

backend changes promoted to certification environment; all functional and

regression test cases passing.

·

Visa

Direct backend production-ready: transaction quality checks passing, health

check endpoints operational.

·

CYBS

integration backend components deployed to UAT / staging environment; test

script execution completed.

·

Backend

architecture decision record (ADR) produced for at least one significant design

choice during the engagement.

·

Technical

runbook produced for all backend components delivered; client engineers

onboarded to operate and maintain systems.

Ongoing KPIs

·

Deliver

backend features reliably in line with sprint commitments and agreed scope.

·

Maintain

high code quality through strong testing practices and low defect escape.

·

Respond

effectively to critical backend issues and support stable production

operations.

·

Contribute

to the reliability, observability, and continuous improvement of backend

services.

·

Transfer

knowledge to client engineers through documentation, pairing, and shared

delivery practices.

6. Stakeholders & Ways of Working

Agile Ceremonies: All sprint ceremonies; leads or contributes to technical

refinement of backend stories; participates in daily stand-ups.

Reporting Cadence:

·

Sprint-level:

backend delivery status reported at sprint review.

·

Ad-hoc:

technical blockers escalated to API Integration Engineer or Scrum Master within

4 hours.

Cross-Functional Touchpoints:

·

API

Integration Engineer (integration design, API contract alignment).

·

Frontend

Engineers (backend API endpoints, data contracts).

·

Data

Scientist (data pipeline backend components, PAN extraction).

·

Internal

Operations and QA teams (testing, production readiness).

·

Visa

technical and certification contacts for host change validation.

7.

Required Skills & Experience

·

6+  years backend engineering experience, with at

least 4 years in payments, fintech, or financial services.

·

Strong

proficiency in one or more: Java, Python, Go, Node.js, or equivalent enterprise-grade

backend languages.

·

Deep

experience with payment platform integrations, including host-side changes,

transaction processing, and tokenization or push payment systems.

·

Proven

ability to design and document scalable, resilient backend architectures.

·

Experience

leading code reviews and mentoring junior/intermediate engineers.

Both Levels:

·

Experience

with RESTful API development and consumption.

·

Familiarity

with database technologies (relational and/or NoSQL) and SQL querying.

·

Understanding

of security best practices in payment systems (PCI-DSS awareness, secure

coding).

·

Experience

with logging, monitoring, and observability tooling.

·

Strong

written communication; ability to produce technical documentation.

8. Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

·

Direct

experience with M-Pesa backend systems or comparable mobile money platforms.

·

Knowledge

of