Software Engineer Technical Lead

Job Title: Software Engineering Technical Lead

Department: Digital
Reporting Line: Head of Software Engineering
Location: Any EEA market or 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 1,500 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

Join a team of impact-driven engineers as a Tech Lead on a mission to use technology for real, tangible change. This role is about more than code—it’s about improving the quality of life for our customers. As a senior technical leader, you’ll work alongside the Head of Software Engineering to set the vision, define the architecture, and guide our team in building resilient, scalable products.

Our core stack is Ruby on Rails and Python, with a clear path toward a multi-tenant, Kubernetes-driven platform that balances speed, reliability, and innovation. Multi-tenancy is central to this journey. You’ll explore both application- and namespace-level approaches, shape CI/CD pipelines and branching models that fit the multi-tenant space, and help us deliver with confidence across diverse environments.

Responsibilities

Lead Our Technical Evolution
Define and own the software architecture and technical roadmap for at least one major product.
Champion Ruby on Rails as a core backend framework while exploring scalable, multi-tenant architectures using Kubernetes.
Shape CI/CD pipelines, branching models, and deployment strategies that support speed, reliability, and innovation.
Drive the transition toward a multi-tenant platform, evaluating both application- and namespace-level approaches.

Innovate with AI and Emerging Tech
Integrate AI-assisted development tools to improve code quality, testing, and release cycles.
Explore AI/ML features that deliver business value and enhance user experience.
Strengthen application security, with a focus on Rails-specific vulnerabilities and broader threat models.

Drive Business Impact
Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to align technical solutions with business goals.
Translate complex requirements into practical, scalable solutions that maximize ROI.
Represent engineering in cross-functional discussions and strategic planning.

Optimize, Scale, and Transform
Lead system transformation efforts: reduce technical debt, improve performance, and scale securely.
Architect and support:
Offline-first mobile integrations for low-connectivity environments.
Efficient RESTful communication between internal and external services.
Data warehouse integrations for advanced analytics and decision-making.
Embed best practices: agile workflows, incident management with SLAs, and proactive problem-solving.

Cultivate a Culture of Excellence
Mentor and grow engineering talent in collaboration with engineering managers.
Define clear performance frameworks and foster a culture of curiosity, learning, and craftsmanship.
Promote diversity, inclusion, and psychological safety within the team.

What We’re Looking For

This is more than a job. It’s an opportunity to lead a mission-driven team, define how multi-tenant, AI-enabled, and globally scalable software is built, and leave a lasting mark.

Experience & Skills

• Experience: 7+ years in software development (2+ in technical leadership), with strong focus on Ruby on Rails backend.
• Methodologies: Solid grasp of software development methods, their trade-offs, and ability to close process gaps quickly.
• Architecture: Proven track record in Rails system design, balancing scalability, maintainability, and performance; deep knowledge of architecture patterns and pitfalls.
• Management: Skilled in resource management, capacity planning, and risk handling.
• Full-Stack Competence: Hands-on expertise across front- and backend frameworks.
• Business & Security: Entrepreneurial mindset with strong appreciation of technology’s business impact; working knowledge of data and application security best practices.
• Cloud & Scale: Experience building scalable web/mobile apps with distributed processing, load balancing, containerization, clustering, and translating complex requirements into solutions.
• Reliability & Observability: Strong background in high availability, structured logging, and monitoring.
• Code Quality: Commitment to clean, well-documented code and organized structures.
• Delivery: Proficiency in CI/CD, automated testing, and deployment best practices for Rails.
• Foundations: Excellent computer science fundamentals and algorithms knowledge.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

Languages

English (required)
French (a plus)

Our Tech Stack

Web Frameworks: Rails 7.2, Django, Flask, FastAPI
Mobile: Android (Kotlin/Java)
Background Tasks: Sidekiq, Celery, RabbitMQ
Frontend: ActiveAdmin, VueJS, Angular
APIs: Grape, Devise, DRF, FastAPI
Testing: RSpec, PyTest
Search: Thinking Sphinx
Storage: MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis
Source Control & CI/CD: GitLab (self-hosted)
Deployment: Capistrano, Ansible

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!