PrincipalArchitect

Job Title: Principal Architect Location: Nairobi, Kenya Reports to: Director, Technology Delivery About the role: The Principal Architect is a highly experienced, hands-on, senior individual contributor who is accountable for the long-term architectural vision, strategy, and technical standards for our mission-critical lending, data, and customer value platform. This role balances deep, hands-on technical expertise in software, platform, and data architecture with the ability to influence and guide multiple engineering teams. The Principal Architect ensures that all technical domains are unified under a coherent, scalable, resilient, and secure enterprise architecture that directly supports the company’s mission and aggressive growth strategy. Main Objectives & Responsibilities: Architectural Vision & Governance: Co-define and champion the long-term technical architecture and standards for the entire platform, ensuring alignment across software engineering, platform engineering, and data architecture domains. Technical Strategy & Architectural Oversight: Institute governance models that ensure architectural adherence, quality, and consistency across all technology domains and that decisions promote scalability, security, and maintainability. Platform & Data Excellence: Establish and promote best practices for platform engineering (DevOps & cloud) and data architecture, in line with a culture of system resilience and data integrity. Cross-Functional Enablement: Collaborate strategically with product managers, engineering managers, and business leaders to translate complex product vision into clear, robust, and well-governed technical architectures and execution plans. Hands-on Delivery & Mentorship: Contribute directly to production code in critical areas, acting as an additional technical coach for engineers and guiding the resolution of the most challenging technical problems. Contribution & Impact: This role is paramount for ensuring the architectural soundness of