Job Title:  Software Engineering Technical Lead 

Department: Digital 

Reporting line:  Head of Software Engineering 

Location: Berlin 

About ENGIE Energy Access  

ENGIE Energy Access is the leading Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) and mini-grids solutions provider in Africa. The company develops innovative, off-grid solar solutions for homes, public services and businesses, enabling customers and distribution partners access to clean, affordable energy. The PAYGO solar home systems are financed through affordable instalments from $0.19 per day and the mini-grids foster economic development by enabling electrical productive use and triggering business opportunities for entrepreneurs in rural communities. With over 1,800 employees, operations in nine countries across Africa (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia), over 1.9 million customers and more than 9 million lives impacted so far, ENGIE Energy Access aims to impact 20 million lives across Africa by 2025.  

www.engie-energyaccess.com    

www.linkedin.com/company/engie-africa  

Job Purpose/Mission   

EEA is seeking a talented, self-motivated tech lead to join the team and help deliver affordable solar power and financial services across Africa. We are seeking a seasoned Ruby on Rails engineer to step into a technical leadership role, driving the architecture and development of scalable web applications. The ideal candidate will possess a strong foundation in software engineering, a passion for writing clean code, and a proven ability to lead teams and make informed architectural decisions. This position offers a great opportunity to work alongside an elite team of engineers and business professionals and directly contribute to the success of a mission driven company with social and environmental impact. Candidates will get the opportunity to work in a diverse technology stack at scale and lead the evolution of at least one of our software products. 

Responsibilities  

• Define software engineering strategy and architecture with a strong emphasis on Ruby on Rails as a foundational backend framework, with other leaders, fully responsible for the technical evolution of at least one software product, responsible for the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) from ideation to deployment.  

• Stay current with emerging technologies and Rails ecosystem updates to maintain a competitive edge in software capabilities. 

• Actively participate and understand the ROI of engineering efforts, understand the value creation and the priorities to the business.  

• Develop and own complex software that optimally uses resources to best meet customer needs. 

• Establishing clarity on business objectives for proper modelling 

• Represent the technical team or assign someone in stakeholder conversations 

• Ensure correct implementation and understanding of business logic 

• Effective Incident management and resolution SLA 

• Technical debt managementespecially within Rails codebases 

• Put efficient development process in place with tools and metrics to stay on top of performance of the team 

• Work closely with Product manager for resource planning and proper estimation 

• Ensure agile processes and other best practices are properly implemented 

• Work with engineering manager to put in place a clear performance management framework 

• Architectural evolution and tech debt management of: 

• Code quality, compliance, and documentation 

• System performance at scale, reliability, observability and high availability 

• System security 

• Maintain a strong focus on application security, including Rails-specific vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies. 

• Contribute to team culture 

At EEA, we have high expectations for our managers. Each manager plays a key role in creating an exceptional experience not only for our customers but for every person on our team. Our managers help EEA realize our ambitious goals while developing their own leadership skills and facilitating growth for their direct reports.   

We believe that great leaders:  

• Deliver ambitious results: As a high-performing and accountable leader, you create an environment enabling effective action and bold decisions which contribute to successful delivery of results.  

• Act with integrity: As an ethical leader you are honest, respectful, objective, and transparent. You create and build upon a foundation of trust and openness.  

• Inspire and mentor the team: As an inspirational leader you walk the talk. You empower and coach your team with trust and humility.  

• Are accessible: as an accessible leader, you develop and maintain deep connections with stakeholders through approachability and active listening.  

• Ensure diversity and inclusion: as an inclusive leader, you ensure diversity and foster a sense of belonging.  

Knowledge and skills    

Experience:   

• At least 7 years of relevant experience, of which 2 are in a technical leadership role, with a strong emphasis on Ruby on Rails for backend development. 

• Practical and thorough understanding of the various software development methodologies, their application in different contexts and trade-offs. Able to identify and quickly address process gaps 

• Proven track record in making sound architectural decisions, especially in Rails-based systems, balancing scalability, maintainability, and performance. 

• Experience in resource management, capacity planning and risk management 

• Deep and pragmatic knowledge of software architecture patterns, their application context and pitfalls/trad-offs 

• Hands-on, senior level competency of full-stack software development using relevant front and backend frameworks 

• Entrepreneurial and forward thinking with ability to recognize the impact of technology in business. 

• Working knowledge of good practices for computer and data security 

• Experience creating and maintaining scalable web/mobile applications in cloud context: distributed task processing, load balancing, containerization, clustering and translating abstract and complex business requirements into software solutions. 

• Good experience on high availability, observability and structured logging 

• Appreciation for detailed source code documentation and organized code structuring 

• Proficiency in CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and deployment best practices in a Rails environment. 

• Excellent knowledge of computer algorithms and solid computer science fundamentals 

Qualifications:  

• Bachelors or Masters in a relevant engineering discipline (Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Computer Science preferred) or comparable 

Language(s):   

• English  

• French is a plus  

 Our Technology stack:  

• Web framework: Rails 7.2, Django, flask, fastapi 

• Mobile: Android Kotlin/Java 

• Background task: Sidekiq , Celery, RabbitMQ 

• Front-end: ActiveAdmin, VueJS, Angular  

• API: Grape, Devise , DRF, FastApi 

• TDD: RSpec , PyTest 

• Search: Thinking Sphinx  

• Storage: MySQL, Mongo, Cassandra, Redis  

• Source Control: Gitlab selfhosted for git and CI/CD  

• Deployment: Capistrano, Ansible  

• Fresh Ideas Always welcome! 

We thank all applicants for their interest, however due to the large volume of applications we receive, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.   

ENGIE is an equal opportunity employer, promoting diversity and committed to creating an inclusive environment for all. All applications are screened based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without any regard to origin, age, name, sexual identity, orientation or preference, religion, marital status, health, disability, political opinions, union involvement or citizenship. Our differences are our strengths!