Careers at Tesfa Pay
Tesfa Pay is building a trusted, compliance‑first way for the diaspora to support families, nonprofits, and communities back home—with dignity, transparency, and speed. If you care about both clean architecture and real human impact, you’ll feel at home here.
We’re early, focused, and intentional about who we bring in. You won’t just “join a team”—you’ll help shape the rails that money and trust move on.
Our mission
Tesfa Pay exists to:
- Empower the diaspora: Make it simple, transparent, and fair to send money.
- Build with compliance at the core: No shortcuts. We design for regulators, partners, and users to trust us.
- Bridge fintech, business, and nonprofit: Payments, services, and impact—aligned in one ecosystem.
How we work
- Impact over vanity: We care more about reliable flows and user trust than flashy features.
- Compliance-first mindset: We treat KYC, AML, and data protection as product features, not afterthoughts.
- Pragmatic engineering: We ship lean, test in the real world, and iterate with discipline.
- Remote-friendly, collaboration-heavy: We use async tools, but we’re serious about clear communication and ownership.
Open roles
We’re currently accepting interest for the following roles. These may start as contract, part‑time, or project‑based, with a path to founding or early employee for the right fit.
Frontend Engineer – React / Next.js
Location: Remote (US‑friendly time zones preferred)
Type: Contract / Part‑time, with potential to grow
Focus: Tesfa Pay web app (send‑money flow, onboarding, dashboards)
Role overview
You’ll own key parts of the Tesfa Pay user experience—from onboarding and KYC flows to fee calculators and transaction dashboards. You’ll work closely with the founder and backend/API engineers to turn complex compliance and payment logic into simple, trustworthy interfaces.
Responsibilities
- Build core user flows in React/Next.js:
- Send‑money flow (amount, fees, recipient, confirmation)
- User onboarding and KYC steps
- Simple admin and partner dashboards
- Implement reusable UI components that are clean, accessible, and mobile‑friendly.
- Integrate with backend APIs for:
- Authentication and session handling
- KYC status and verification steps
- Transaction creation and status updates
- Handle state and data flows using patterns that keep things predictable and testable.
- Collaborate on UX and copy, especially around sensitive flows (KYC, errors, compliance messaging).
- Contribute to technical decisions on frontend architecture, tooling, and best practices.
Minimum qualifications
- 2+ years of experience building production web apps with React.
- Solid experience with Next.js (routing, data fetching, API routes, environment configs).
- Strong understanding of JavaScript/TypeScript, modern ES features, and component-based architecture.
- Experience integrating with RESTful APIs (authentication, error handling, retries, loading states).
- Comfort with Git, basic CI/CD workflows, and environment management.
- Ability to work in a lean, early‑stage environment with incomplete specs and evolving requirements.
- Clear communication skills and a habit of documenting what you build.
Nice to have
- Experience with fintech, payments, or financial dashboards.
- Familiarity with form-heavy flows (multi‑step forms, validation, edge cases).
- Experience with design systems or component libraries (e.g., Chakra, MUI, Tailwind).
- Understanding of basic security practices in frontend (input sanitization, token handling, etc.).
- Interest in diaspora, remittances, or nonprofit impact.
Backend / API Engineer – Banking & KYC Integrations
Location: Remote (US‑friendly time zones preferred)
Type: Contract / Part‑time, with potential to grow
Focus: Payment rails, bank APIs, and customer identification (KYC) integrations
Role overview
You’ll design and implement the backend services and integrations that power Tesfa Pay’s core: bank connections, payment flows, and KYC/AML checks. Your work will sit at the intersection of reliability, security, and regulatory expectations.
Responsibilities
- Design and build backend services for:
- User onboarding and identity lifecycle
- Payment initiation, tracking, and status updates
- Fee calculation and transaction records
- Integrate with external APIs, such as:
- Bank/payment providers (e.g., ACH, payout partners, remittance rails)
- KYC/identity verification vendors (document checks, sanctions screening, watchlists)
- Implement robust error handling and observability:
- Logging, retries, idempotency, and clear failure modes
- Model and store data securely (users, KYC status, transactions, audit logs).
- Collaborate with frontend engineers to define clean, well-documented internal APIs.
- Support compliance needs by exposing the right data for audits, reporting, and monitoring.
Minimum qualifications
- 3+ years of backend development experience in a modern language (e.g., Node.js, TypeScript, Go, or Python).
- Proven experience integrating with third‑party APIs (authentication, webhooks, rate limits, error handling).
- Understanding of RESTful API design and best practices.
- Experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and data modeling.
- Familiarity with security fundamentals:
- Secrets management
- Encryption in transit and at rest
- Least‑privilege access patterns
- Experience working with production systems where reliability and data integrity matter.
- Comfortable reading and implementing against API docs from banks, payment providers, or KYC vendors.
Nice to have
- Prior experience in fintech, banking, remittances, or payments.
- Hands‑on work with KYC/AML vendors (e.g., identity verification, sanctions screening, fraud tools).
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks (e.g., KYC, AML, OFAC, GDPR basics).
- Experience with event‑driven architectures, queues, or background job processing.
- Experience designing audit trails and compliance‑friendly logging.
Founding / Full‑Stack Engineer – React / Next.js + APIs & KYC
Location: Remote (US‑friendly time zones preferred)
Type: Flexible (contract to founding role / early employee)
Focus: Owning end‑to‑end slices of the product—from UI to integrations
Role overview
You’re comfortable jumping between frontend and backend, and you care deeply about building something that actually works in the real world. You’ll help define the technical foundation of Tesfa Pay and ship the first versions of the flows that users, partners, and regulators will all touch.
Responsibilities
- Own full product slices, such as:
- New user onboarding (UI + backend + KYC integration)
- Send‑money flow (fee display, confirmation, transaction creation, provider integration)
- Simple admin tools (view users, KYC status, transactions)
- Build and refine React/Next.js interfaces that are clear, fast, and trustworthy.
- Design and integrate backend APIs with payment and KYC providers.
- Shape the architecture (folder structure, patterns, testing approach, deployment strategy).
- Collaborate directly with the founder on priorities, tradeoffs, and roadmap.
- Help set engineering standards for code quality, security, and documentation.
Minimum qualifications
- Strong experience with React/Next.js and at least one backend stack (Node/TypeScript, Go, or Python).
- Demonstrated ability to ship end‑to‑end features in a startup or small‑team environment.
- Experience integrating with external APIs and handling real‑world edge cases.
- Comfort with databases, migrations, and schema design.
- Strong sense of ownership and willingness to work through ambiguity.
- Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset.
Nice to have
- Experience in fintech or regulated environments.
- Interest in long‑term ownership (equity, founding engineer track).
- Familiarity with infrastructure basics (deployment, monitoring, logging, environment setup).
- Passion for diaspora communities, remittances, or nonprofit impact.
To apply or express interest, share:
- Name
- Location / Time zone
- Role(s) you’re interested in
- GitHub / Portfolio / LinkedIn
- Short note on why Tesfa Pay resonates with you
- Relevant experience (especially with React/Next.js, APIs, banking, or KYC)
You can send this and your resume via email to [email protected].