Chief Technology Officer (French speaking, FinTech, Payments, Africa experience)

About the role

Our client, a Dubai‑based fintech company with operations across Africa, is seeking a Chief Technology Officer to define and execute its technology vision. The CTO will lead both a high‑transaction payments platform and a B2B ordering system, ensuring reliability, scalability, and regulatory compliance.

Key responsibilities

• Define a multi‑year technology strategy aligned with growth, reliability, cost discipline and compliance.
• Establish architectural principles, engineering standards and a roadmap for platform evolution, security and data analytics.
• Lead and grow an internal engineering team while governing external technology partners and vendors.
• Oversee delivery governance, agile at scale, release management, QA, and operational readiness.
• Drive incident response, high‑stakes decision‑making and continuous improvement of observability and production operations.

Required profile

• 10‑15+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading teams on high‑transaction, integration‑heavy platforms.
• Strong background in fintech or payments, with a proven track record in emerging markets, preferably Africa.
• Fluent in English and French, with excellent communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work with cloud platforms, manage SLAs and lead external partners.

Required skills

• JVM‑class ecosystem (or equivalent) for enterprise‑grade backend development.
• API‑first design and relational database expertise.
• Modern authentication/authorization patterns and secure engineering practices.
• Agile at scale, release management, quality assurance and operational readiness.
• Cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, observability and production operations.