Lead Backend Architect
Cairo, Egypt
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Job Description
- About Us
- We are building 99, an ethical money account for the UK market. Our mission is simple: give people a transparent, fair, and values aligned way to manage their money. We are a pre seed fintech operating as an EMI agent under UK regulation, which means we take compliance and data protection seriously while moving fast to ship product.
- We are establishing an engineering presence in Egypt to build our core platform. This role is the first technical hire in that hub and will set the foundation for everything that follows.
- The Role
- You will be the Lead Backend Architect for our Egypt Engineering Hub. You will design the systems that power our mobile app, define how we integrate with banking partners, and ensure our architecture can scale from thousands to millions of users. You will work closely with UK leadership on product direction and technical standards.
- This is not a hands off architecture role. You will write code, establish engineering practices, and make the final call on technical trade offs. You will also design our shadow ledger, the internal system that tracks every penny moving through our platform and ensures we can reconcile with our banking partners down to the last cent.
- What You Will Do
- Design and build the core backend services that handle user accounts, transactions, subscriptions, and regulatory reporting
- Architect our shadow ledger system, ensuring immutable records, audit trails, and perfect reconciliation with EMI Principal systems
- Define database schemas, API contracts, and service boundaries that can evolve as we grow
- Establish code review standards and enforce security, performance, and maintainability across the codebase
- Collaborate with UK product leadership to translate business requirements into technical specifications
- Define infrastructure requirements and deployment patterns that satisfy UK data residency rules
- Document architectural decisions, runbooks, and technical specifications in plain English for UK stakeholders
How We Work
Our Egypt hub operates on a zero access model. You will build systems that handle UK customer data, but you will never see that data yourself. We use synthetic data for development, mock servers for integration testing, and automated pipelines for deployment. Production access is restricted by design. You will architect the systems, but production credentials remain with UK based DevOps. This is non negotiable for regulatory compliance, and we need someone who respects those boundaries while still shipping excellent software.
What We Offer
- Competitive salary paid monthly (GBP£ Optional)
- Performance based bonuses tied to product milestones
- Professional development budget for conferences, courses, and certifications
- Flexible working hours with core collaboration times
- Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of an early stage fintech from the ground up
- Direct impact on a product that helps people manage money in line with their values
Job Requirements
- What We Need From You
- Seven or more years of backend development experience, with at least three in a senior or lead role
- Deep expertise in one or more of Java, Python, Go, or Node.js
- Proven experience designing distributed systems and microservices at scale
- Expert level PostgreSQL skills, including schema design, query optimization, and partitioning strategies
- Strong grasp of API design, RESTful principles, and security best practices
- Hands on experience with AWS or Google Cloud Platform, including serverless, containers, and managed databases
- Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation
- Understanding of event driven architecture and message queues such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
- Experience in fintech, banking, or another regulated industry where audit trails and compliance matter
- Knowledge of double entry bookkeeping, reconciliation processes, or ledger systems
- Security first mindset with understanding of encryption, authentication, authorization, and common attack vectors
- Ability to write clear technical documentation and communicate complex ideas to non technical audiences
- Fluent English, written and verbal, for daily communication with UK team members
- What Sets You Apart
- Experience building shadow ledger or sub ledger systems that sync with primary banking infrastructure
- Knowledge of UK financial regulations, EMI frameworks, or GDPR data residency requirements
- Familiarity with event sourcing, CQRS, or other patterns that create immutable, auditable records
- Experience working in a zero trust or data isolated environment where production access is restricted
- Background in Islamic finance or ethical banking principles
- Contributions to open source projects or technical community leadership
