Chief Technology Officer – FinTech, Payments, French‑speaking, Africa focus

About the role

Our client, a Dubai‑based fintech company with operations across Africa, is looking for a visionary Chief Technology Officer. The CTO will shape the technology strategy for high‑transaction payment platforms and a B2B ordering system, ensuring reliability, scalability, and regulatory compliance.

Key responsibilities

• Define and communicate a multi‑year technology roadmap aligned with business growth and cost discipline.
• Establish architectural principles, engineering standards, and security/compliance maturity plans.
• Lead an internal engineering team and manage external technology partners with clear SLAs.
• Oversee delivery governance, agile at scale, release management, QA, and operational readiness.
• Drive incident response and high‑stakes decision‑making with calm, transparent leadership.

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, preferably with African market exposure.
• Fluent in English and French, with excellent communication skills.
• Proven ability to balance speed of delivery with long‑term maintainability.

Required skills

• JVM‑class ecosystem expertise (e.g., Java, Kotlin)
• API‑first design and relational database fundamentals
• Modern authentication/authorization patterns and secure engineering practices
• Agile at scale, release management, QA discipline
• Cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, observability, production operations