Founding Engineer

About the role

Zuba are looking for a Member of Technical Staff to build their merchant portal from zero — a business account product that enables African merchants to receive and manage global payouts. You’ll get the first merchant live and transacting end-to-end, then scale the product.

This is a true 0-to-1 role. You’ll architect and build a full-stack product from scratch — authentication, virtual accounts, balance management, quote generation, transaction history, and custody infrastructure. You’ll think about product, not just code, and you’ll build for the market: low-end devices, poor connectivity, and cost-sensitive users.

A few reasons why you might find this exciting:

1. You’ll build a product from scratch — no legacy code, no inherited decisions. You’ll architect the system, ship the MVP, and iterate based on real merchant feedback.
2. Product thinking meets deep engineering — you won’t just take tickets. You’ll contribute to decisions about what to build and why, shaping a product that serves merchants across Africa.
3. Real-world constraints, real impact — you’ll design for users on low-end Android devices with intermittent connectivity, building something that genuinely works for the market.
4. Custody and crypto infrastructure — you’ll integrate wallet-as-a-service infrastructure, multi-sig wallet security, and withdrawal workflows at the intersection of traditional payments and stablecoin rails.

Who you are

• You’ve built fintech products before — experience with payment systems, custody integrations, or financial products in production.
• You’re full-stack and product-minded — TypeScript, React, Node, and Postgres preferred but not rigid. You build user-facing interfaces that are functional and clear, not just backend systems.
• You can build from zero — comfortable architecting systems with no existing codebase, making foundational decisions, and shipping fast.
• You pick things up quickly — new tools, new APIs, new domains. You figure it out and move.
• You design for the market — you understand constraints like low-end devices, poor connectivity, and cost-sensitive users, and you build accordingly.
• You ship fast — comfortable with 7-day iteration cycles and adapting quickly as business needs evolve.
• Bonus: Experience with custody/wallet infrastructure, crypto rails, or IT security compliance (e.g. DORA, GDPR).

Some topics you’ll think about

• What’s the right MVP scope for a merchant portal that gets merchants transacting quickly without over-building?
• How do we design authentication and account management for users who may be on low-end devices with unreliable internet?
• What does custody infrastructure look like when you’re bridging traditional banking rails with stablecoin wallets?
• How do we build product analytics from day one so we’re iterating on real data, not assumptions?
• How do we balance speed of shipping with security requirements for a product handling real money?