Job Description

Meet Ozow
Ozow is a leading fintech company that's redefining digital payments in South Africa and beyond. We're dedicated to making payments more accessible, secure, and convenient for both businesses and consumers. As a fast-growing player in the financial technology sector, Ozow fosters a culture of innovation, diversity, and inclusivity. We believe in pushing the boundaries of what's possible and are committed to making a positive impact on the world through our payment solutions.
More about this Ozow fantastic position
As a Software Development Manager at Ozow, you will be accountable for shaping the technical vision, coaching and developing high-performing engineering teams, and ensuring the delivery of world-class software solutions. You will combine strong technical expertise, modern engineering practices, and people-first leadership to drive innovation, improve engineering efficiency, and support individual and team growth.
Your role and responsibilities
Technical Leadership:

• Define and communicate the technical strategy for your teams, ensuring alignment with product and business goals.
• Provide hands-on architectural guidance, contributing to high-level solution design, technical decision-making, and technology selection.
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices (CI/CD, code quality, security standards, cloud adoption, testing maturity).
• Review and improve system architecture for scalability, reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency.
• Oversee technical roadmaps, ensuring effective planning for refactoring, tech debt reduction, and platform evolution.
• Introduce and champion emerging technologies, frameworks, and engineering methodologies that elevate technical capability.
• Drive operational excellence, including incident response, root-cause analysis, and service-level improvements.

Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing cross-functional team of software developers and engineers.
• Conduct regular performance reviews, ensuring clear expectations, objective assessment, and development-oriented feedback.
• Develop individual career development plans with engineers, helping them progress along technical or leadership tracks.
• Create and facilitate learning and upskilling opportunities - workshops, training courses, certifications, mentoring, and knowledge-sharing.
• Establish a culture of psychological safety, collaboration, ownership, and innovation.
• Drive workforce planning, ensuring the right skills are in place to meet future business and technology requirements.
• Promote diversity, inclusivity, and equitable growth opportunities within the team.
• Manage day-to-day team operations including 1:1s, team meetings, conflict resolution, recognition, and engagement.
• Support employee wellbeing, workload balance, and sustainable team practices.
• Participate in the recruitment and hiring process to attract top software development talent.
• Build and expand the software development team as needed.

Project Management:

• Oversee project planning, estimation, execution, and delivery to ensure roadmap commitments are met on time and within scope.
• Collaborate with Product Management to align features, priorities, and timelines.
• Ensure visibility into project status through accurate reporting, metrics, and risk management.
• Drive effective agile processes (Scrum/Kanban) and continuous improvement of delivery workflows.

Resource, Budget & Vendor Management

• Manage staffing, resource allocation, hiring plans, contractor or vendor relationships.
• Support and participate in recruitment to attract top software engineering talent.
• Work within budget constraints, ensuring cost-effective use of technologies, tools, and hosting resources.

Quality Assurance & Engineering Excellence

• Champion a culture of quality, ensuring that engineering work meets the highest standards of safety, performance, maintainability, and compliance.
• Implement and monitor structured QA processes, automated testing strategies, and release management workflows.
• Oversee metrics that demonstrate engineering health (code quality, deployment frequency, defect rates, SLA adherence).

Documentation and Reporting & Stakeholder Engagement

• Ensure comprehensive technical documentation is created and maintained (architecture, APIs, systems, processes).
• Provide clear, concise reporting on delivery progress, team performance, risks, and technical issues.
• Build trusted relationships with internal stakeholders across product, business, infrastructure, and leadership teams.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Stay ahead of industry trends to bring innovative thinking and new technologies into the engineering organisation.
• Identify opportunities for process optimisation, automation, and improved developer experience.
• Drive retrospectives and initiatives that increase team productivity, product quality, and operational maturity.

You are an ideal candidate if you have

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or related field.
• Proven experience in software development and management roles, with a strong background in payment technology or financial services.
• Proficiency in software development methodologies, tools, and best practices.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities.

Your skills and competencies

• You eagerly embrace change, absorb cross-functional skills, and connect ideas across disciplines to drive fresh thinking and innovation.
• Ability to initiate, develop, maintain and leverage outstanding relationships to influence a wide network, both inside and outside the company.
• A trailblazer who steps up, takes charge, and creates meaningful impact-those driven by performance and purpose to lead from the front and make a real difference every day.
• You thrive in collaboration, embrace inclusion, and bring a genuine curiosity for global cultures-valuing collective success over individual credit.
• Demonstrate strategic foresight, sound judgement, and the ability to make confident decisions under uncertainty, always working toward the best possible outcomes.
• You challenge norms, champion innovation, and constantly seek growth-for themselves, their team, and the solutions they build.
• You are a decisive doer-those who take initiative, follow through with confidence, and ensure results through courageous, hands-on leadership.
• We value optimism, agility, and the strength to persevere under pressure-balancing performance with positivity, even in challenging environments.
• You are driven, proactive individuals who take ownership, face challenges with grit, and consistently push for excellence-not just as participants, but as catalysts for success.

Interview process
During the interview process you will meet with the People team, the hiring manager, and relevant CSuite. Be prepared to complete a technical assessment that will showcase your skills.
In office perks

• Healthy breakfast, lunches and snacks
• Monthly team connects
• On-site Barista
• Birthday Leave

Perks for South African based employees

• Medical aid subsidy
• Group Risk Insurance
• Generous paid annual leave
• Birthday leave
• Learning and Development opportunities
• Mentorship programme
• Quarterly team building
• Community initiatives
• Access to cutting edge technology -

Our Employee Value Proposition
Join Ozow and become part of an elite force that challenges the ordinary and achieves the extraordinary. If you're driven to make an impact, embrace challenges, and seek unparalleled opportunities for growth, your journey starts here.
Compliance
As a fintech company, we prioritize data security, confidentiality, regulatory and compliance. Due to the sensitive nature of our work, we require individuals with a high level of integrity and trustworthiness to ensure adherence to financial regulations and industry standards. Given the sensitive nature of our work, all employees are expected to demonstrate professionalism, accountability, and a commitment to ethical conduct in line with financial regulations and industry standards
Ready to be exceptional? Apply now!
Keen to know more?
Interested in joining our rocket ship?
To find out more about life at Ozow, head over to our Careers Page

Skills Required