Principal Engineer - EMEA - Kredete

Deskripsi

Contract Duration: Months

Location: New York, Remote

About Kredete

Kredete is a financial technology platform designed to help African immigrants build credit and send money instantly to over 50 African countries - amongst other product offerings. Using Stablecoins and modern payment systems, we make it easy and affordable for businesses to move money across borders. Our mission is to provide accessible, secure, and low-cost financial solutions that improve cash flow and support financial growth for individuals and businesses.

We've built a product customers love and a business that scales fast. Kredete operates in 3 global offices (New York, Lagos and Riga, Latvia), and is backed by world-class investors. Our teams are shipping payment systems built to run faster and we are expanding across new product lines and markets.

At Kredete you'll join a company in motion—ambitious, profitable, inclusive and product-driven—where impact is visible, decisions are fast, and growth is real. We believe in customer obsession, continuous learning, and delivering extraordinary outcomes. If you thrive in a fast-paced, team-driven environment where curiosity, trust, and impact matter, you'll fit right in.

About the Role

Kredete is seeking a seasoned Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership across our engineering organization, spanning frontend, backend, blockchain, and AI-powered workflow systems.

This is a high-impact, hands-on leadership role sitting close to the core of the business. You will lead the design and implementation of complex, regulated, real-world systems that blend AI automation, human-in-the-loop workflows, and secure financial infrastructure, with a strong focus on stablecoin rails and cross-border payments, particularly in African markets.

You will work closely with the CTO and Kredete Leadership to shape and document product strategy, technical roadmaps, and engineering processes. As a key technical and cultural leader, you will set the bar for architecture, quality, security, and operational excellence—while remaining deeply involved in system design and critical implementation work.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys systems thinking, owning ambiguous problem spaces, and building durable, auditable infrastructure in regulated environments.

What You'll Work On

Architecting AI-driven workflow and orchestration systems that blend automation with human decision-making.

• Designing and operating human-in-the-loop systems where AI prepares, assists, escalates, and follows up on human work
• Building long-running, stateful workflows that span days or weeks with strong observability and recovery mechanisms
• Designing stablecoin payment rails to support global cross-border transactions with a strong focus on compliance and security
• Architecting secure, scalable blockchain and decentralized financial systems
• Building and maintaining scalable API infrastructure that supports Kredete's products
• Integrating with external systems such as insurers, government portals, EVV platforms, messaging tools, and legacy third-party providers
• Designing confidence scoring, auditability, rollback, and failure-handling mechanisms for AI and financial systems
• Improving system reliability, observability, performance, and operational safety in production

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Lead high- and low-level system architecture across backend, blockchain, AI workflows, and APIs
• Make, document, and communicate architectural decisions with clear trade-offs
• Define best practices and patterns for AI + human collaboration in production systems
• Proactively identify technical risks and propose mitigation strategies
• Ensure systems are secure, observable, auditable, and compliant at scale

Hands-On Engineering

• Review backend code logic and provide constructive feedback
• Actively participate in hands-on coding when required, setting a high bar for quality
• Establish and enforce best practices for , TypeScript, , PostgreSQL, and AWS
• Design, build, and maintain secure, scalable APIs and stablecoin infrastructure

Team Leadership & Process

• Lead and mentor frontend, backend, mobile, and blockchain engineers
• Build a cohesive, motivated, high-velocity engineering culture
• Implement agile processes that promote clarity, accountability, and rapid iteration
• Conduct design reviews, code reviews, and technical mentoring (formal and informal)
• Partner deeply with operations and product to understand real-world edge cases and failure modes

Delivery, Quality & Operations

• Champion CI/CD, automated testing, and rigorous review standards
• Monitor API performance, reliability, and security, driving continuous improvement
• Collaborate with DevOps on AWS infrastructure (EC2, RDS, S3, CloudFormation)
• Ensure systems meet compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements
• Optimize workflows, tooling, and automation to increase velocity and developer satisfaction

What We're Looking For

Required

• 7+ years of experience building and operating production software systems
• Proven experience architecting and owning complex systems end-to-end
• Strong backend engineering skills preferred, language-agnostic mindset)
• Experience with asynchronous, event-driven, or workflow-based systems
• Experience in payments, fintech, blockchain, or API-based platforms
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Comfort operating in ambiguous problem spaces with incomplete information
• Self-starter mindset with a strong sense of ownership and accountability

Nice to Have

• Experience in regulated environments (fintech, healthtech, or compliance-heavy domains)
• Familiarity with HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, data privacy, or audit-driven systems
• Hands-on experience with AI / LLM-powered systems and automation
• Experience designing human-in-the-loop or review-based workflows
• Familiarity with Anthropic / Claude or similar LLM platforms
• Experience integrating with unreliable or legacy third-party systems
• Frontend experience with Angular and mobile experience with Flutter/Dart

How We Work

• Remote-first, with occasional hybrid collaboration (local or international travel, if needed)
• Small, senior teams with high trust and ownership
• Emphasis on system correctness, resilience, and long-term maintainability
• Thoughtful, pragmatic use of AI—internally and in our products
• Direct exposure to real users and measurable operational impact

Opportunity: At Kredete, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and all applicants seeking employment with us are strictly based on merit, competency and qualifications. We do not discriminate based on religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital or family status, disability or gender.

Data Protection: By applying to this role, you consent to the collection and processing of your personal data by Kredete for the purposes of assessing your suitability for the advertised position. All personal data will be processed in accordance with applicable data protection laws.