Odola is a fintech democratising access to premium banking for the masses.
We're looking for an experienced Senior Back-End Engineer to help build the core infrastructure powering Odola's banking and payments platform. This role is ideally suited to engineers who have already worked on bank integrations, payment systems, issuer processing, ledgering, card programmes, sponsor bank connectivity, or financial infrastructure at scale.
You'll join a high-calibre team of engineers from companies including Amazon, Canva, IBM, and Deloitte, and play a key role in designing and building the systems that sit at the heart of Odola, from core banking capabilities and payment orchestration to card programme infrastructure and AI-enabled platform services.
We are especially interested in engineers who understand the complexity of moving money reliably, integrating with external financial partners, and building resilient systems in regulated environments.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and maintain backend services that power Odola's banking, payments, and card infrastructure, with a focus on scalability, reliability, security, and operational resilience
- Build robust APIs and backend workflows for products spanning accounts, payments, card transactions, ledgers, and customer servicing
- Lead or contribute to integrations with banks, card processors, sponsor banks, BIN sponsors, payment networks, and other regulated financial partners
- Help design the technical foundations for card programmes, including authorization flows, transaction processing, settlement, reconciliation, dispute handling, and operational controls
- Work closely with product, design, and engineering to define requirements, shape architecture, and drive delivery from concept through launch
- Improve system performance across databases, event pipelines, caching layers, and messaging systems
- Build systems that are observable, fault-tolerant, and designed for correctness in money movement and financial operations
- Write well-tested, production-grade code, including handling edge cases, failure modes, and reliability concerns
- Strengthen engineering processes, tooling, and standards to improve team effectiveness and software quality
- Contribute to the use of AI and automation to accelerate development and improve platform capabilities
Basic qualifications
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating backend systems in production
- Strong experience with Java or TypeScript in backend environments
- Proven experience building scalable APIs, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures
- Direct experience working on payments, bank integrations, card programmes, issuer processing, ledger systems, or other regulated fintech infrastructure
- Strong understanding of reliability, idempotency, reconciliation, and failure handling in transaction-heavy systems
- Hands-on experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL
- Experience working with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure
- Experience delivering software across the full development lifecycle in a professional engineering environment
Preferred qualifications
- Prior experience integrating with banks, sponsor banks, card networks, issuer processors, KYC/KYB providers, fraud tools, or payment partners
- Experience building systems involving cards, direct debit, ACH, faster payments, wallets, or other money movement rails
- Familiarity with core concepts such as ledgering, authorization, settlement, reconciliation, disputes, and transaction lifecycle management
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
- Experience with coding standards, code reviews, testing, source control, build systems, and production operations
- Experience with Domain-Driven Design (DDD), CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code
- Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and how they can be applied in backend systems
Who you are
- You've worked on real financial infrastructure and understand the practical complexity of integrating with external financial systems
- You are comfortable operating in ambiguity and helping shape architecture as products and partnerships evolve
- You care deeply about correctness, resilience, and customer experience
- You enjoy building from first principles and thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment
- You're excited by the opportunity to help build a category-defining fintech platform from the ground up
