Full stack Software Engineer (Web) at Jaza Energy Tanzania

Jaza is working to power Sub-Saharan Africa. We build solar-powered shops which charge batteries customers use to power their homes. Since 2022, we’ve achieved over 4 million battery swaps, providing approximately 225,000 people access to clean, affordable energy.

We employ women from each community (known as Jaza Stars) to run the service, empowering our team to become leaders, entrepreneurs and drivers of economic growth within their communities. For more information on what we are building, check out www.jazaenergy.com and watch the video the BBC made about Jaza here.

Position Overview

We’re looking for a strong backend-focused fullstack engineer to own internal tooling, APIs, and workflow automation across Ops, Finance, and Device Data. You’ll work primarily in a Laravel/PHP ecosystem, with exposure to Python and JavaScript, and be responsible for stabilising and extending our core backend systems: payment logic, integrations, data contracts, and automation workflows. This role is a mix of deep backend work (70–80%) and pragmatic fullstack tasks (20–30%) to keep internal tools fast, reliable, and easy to use. You’ll be joining a small, highly-autonomous backend team and will have an immediate impact on reducing bottlenecks, improving reliability, and unlocking new workflows for a product that takes Solar Energy to Africa’s most rural areas.”

Roles And Responsibilities

The Full stack Software Engineer responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Internal Tools Development

• Build and maintain internal web tools used by Ops, Finance, Device teams, and other internal stakeholders.
• Translate manual workflows into robust, auditable tools and dashboards.
• Migrate some Python logic into the main Laravel system.

API Layer

• Design, build and maintain RESTful APIs in Laravel/PHP.
• Ensure secure, well-documented, and backwards-compatible APIs for internal and external consumers for scale migration

System Integrations

• Own integrations with payment providers, telcos, CRMs, analytics, and other third-party systems.
• Monitor and fix integration failures and edge cases, especially those tied to money and critical ops workflows.

Workflow Automation Engine

• Implement and maintain automation logic for recurring operational workflows
• (collections, device events, notifications, settlement flows, etc.). Replace brittle manual processes with reliable automated pipelines.

Data Contracts & Reliability

• Define and maintain data contracts between services and teams.
• Ensure data correctness for financial and operational reporting, including well-tested and observable code.

Qualifications

Required

• 3+ - 5+ years of experience in full-stack web development
• Fluent in English, both written and spoken, with excellent communication skills for working across international teams
• Strong proficiency in PHP and the Laravel framework, including Eloquent ORM, middleware, and service containers
• Solid understanding of REST APIs
• Relational databases (PostgreSQL)
• Experience with Laravel's queue system, job processing, and message queuing systems such as RabbitMQ
• Working knowledge of Redis for caching, session management, and queue handling
• Experience building and maintaining internal tools and automation workflows, including scripting repetitive tasks and scheduled jobs
• Hands-on experience with Livewire for building dynamic interfaces
• Proficiency in Alpine.js and comfort with JavaScript for internal UIs
• Strong CSS skills with Tailwind CSS
• Able to read and modify Python scripts
• Intermediate DevOps familiarity, including Docker, environments, logs, and basic CI/CD
• Familiarity with DigitalOcean infrastructure, including Droplets, managed databases, and Spaces
• Experience with version control using Git and GitLab

Preferred

Experience with:

• Payment providers, mobile money, or other FinTech-style integrations
• Telco, IoT, or device data integrations
• Event-driven architectures (queues, pub/sub) and workflow engines are used for designing systems where components communicate through events.
• Particle console

Prior Experience In

• Distributed teams across multiple African markets
• Energy, infrastructure, or other operationally intensive industries
• Experience mentoring junior engineers or leading small squad

Familiarity With

• Basic infrastructure-as-code
• Monitoring/alerting tools (e.g., Sentry, Prometheus/Grafana)

Must have skills

• 5+ years of experience
• Full stack
• African markets
• PHP Laravel Eloquent ORM REST APIs Frontend: Livewire Alpine.js Tailwind CSS Data & Queuing: PostgreSQL Redis RabbitMQ/Queues DevOps/Infra: GitLab Docker DigitalOcean Soft Skills: Fluent English International Teams Scripting: Python (Reading/Modifying)

Good to have skills

• Industry Context: FinTech/Payments Mobile Money IoT/Telco Energy/Infra Advanced Architecture: Event-Driven Pub/Sub Workflow Engines Specific Tools: Particle Console Sentry Prometheus/Grafana Leadership: Mentorship Squad Lead Advanced DevOps: Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) CI/CD