Mid-Level Full-Stack Developer

ABOUT ZETECH UNIVERSITY

Zetech University is a fast-growing Nairobi-based fintech startup building Kenya's next-generation digital payments and business finance platform. We help SMEs manage invoices, receive payments via M-Pesa and card, access working capital, and track their business finances — all in one platform. Founded in 2021, we now serve over 14,000 active businesses across Kenya and are expanding into Uganda and Tanzania. We are a team of 34 people who move fast, ship real products, and care deeply about the businesses we serve.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are looking for a Mid-Level Full-Stack Developer to join our Product Engineering team. You will work across the entire stack — building and improving our merchant dashboard (React/Next.js), our backend APIs (Node.js), our M-Pesa and payment integrations, and our internal tooling. You will collaborate closely with designers, the product manager, and senior engineers. This is a high-ownership role — you will ship features end-to-end, not just complete tickets.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

•    Build and maintain features across the full stack: React/Next.js frontend and Node.js/Express backend

•    Design and implement RESTful APIs consumed by our web and mobile clients

•    Integrate and maintain payment APIs — M-Pesa Daraja (STK Push, C2B, B2C), card payments (Flutterwave/Stripe)

•    Design and manage databases — PostgreSQL for transactional data, Redis for caching

•    Implement secure authentication and role-based access control for merchant and admin users

•    Write clean, tested, and documented code — unit and integration tests are expected

•    Participate in code reviews and contribute to improving engineering standards

•    Work in a CI/CD environment using GitHub Actions and deploy on AWS

•    Collaborate with the product and design teams in two-week sprint cycles

•    Debug production issues promptly and contribute to incident postmortems

REQUIREMENTS

•    3+ years of professional full-stack development experience

•    Strong proficiency in React and/or Next.js for frontend development

•    Solid Node.js and Express.js backend experience — REST API design and development

•    Experience with PostgreSQL — schema design, queries, migrations

•    JavaScript and TypeScript proficiency

•    Experience implementing authentication — JWT, OAuth 2.0, session management

•    Hands-on experience integrating third-party APIs (payment, SMS, or similar)

•    Version control with Git — branching, PRs, code review workflow

•    Understanding of web security basics — input validation, HTTPS, SQL injection prevention

•    Ability to work independently and communicate clearly in a remote-hybrid team

NICE TO HAVE

•    M-Pesa Daraja API integration experience (huge plus in this role)

•    AWS deployment experience — EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda

•    React Native or mobile development experience

•    Experience working in a fintech or payments environment

•    Familiarity with Docker and containerised deployments

•    Prior startup experience — comfortable with fast-changing priorities

WHAT WE OFFER

•    KES 150,000 – 220,000/month gross depending on experience

•    ESOP (equity) after 12 months — grow with the company

•    Hybrid working — 3 days in our Westlands office, 2 days remote

•    Medical insurance (employee + 2 dependants)

•    Annual learning budget of KES 50,000 for courses, conferences, books

•    MacBook Pro provided

•    Team offsites twice a year

•    Fast-moving environment with real ownership — your code ships to 14,000+ businesses