Backend Developer - Digital Payments

Job Title : Backend Developer – Digital Payments

Employment type : Contract

Contract length : 6-12 months

Location : Cape Town, South Africa

PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

We are looking for a Backend Developer with strong ownership, coordination, and delivery discipline, specialising in Java based systems and cloud native development on AWS. This role is essential to sustaining high performance, scalable, and secure backend services that support mission critical payment platforms and ensure operational continuity across cross-functional systems.

The Backend Developer will design, develop, and maintain robust microservices using Java, leveraging AWS services to build resilient, distributed architectures. Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams to manage system integrations, dependencies, and deployment pipelines.

Additionally, the developer will contribute to performance optimisation, system reliability, and continuous improvement initiatives, supporting predictable and high-quality delivery in a fast paced, highly regulated environment.

Core Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• Design and implement backend changes required for Tokenisation, including token service enrolment flows, host system changes, and operational backend processes.
• Develop and integrate CYBS (CyberSource) service backend components into the M-Pesa payment stack, following agreed integration architecture.
• Implement backend support for push provisioning app enhancements, including secure token storage, provisioning state management, and notification services.
• Build and maintain logging, monitoring, and alerting infrastructure for all initiative-specific backend services, ensuring operational visibility pre- and post-production launch.
• Execute and support backend functional testing, including integration tests, regression suites, and performance benchmarking; log and remediate defects to agreed SLAs.
• Collaborate with team on end-to-end integration design, ensuring backend services expose well-formed, documented APIs.
• Support knowledge transfer by co-authoring technical runbooks, system design documentation, and onboarding guides for client engineering counterparts.

Knowledge and Experience:

• 6+ years backend development experience, with at least 4 years in payments, fintech, or financial services.
• Strong proficiency in one or more: Java, Python, Go, Node.js, or equivalent enterprise grade backend languages.
• Deep experience with payment platform integrations, including host side changes, transaction processing, and tokenization or push payment systems.
• Proven ability to design and document scalable, resilient backend architectures.
• Experience leading code reviews and mentoring junior/intermediate engineers.
• Experience with RESTful API development and