Vice President of Engineering

1 week ago

Nairobi, Nairobi Area, Kenya Dekaya Full time $120,000 - $250,000 per year

Title: Vice President of Engineering

Location: East Africa

Reports To: Chief Technical Officer , Chief Executive Officer

Role of Dekaya

At Dekaya, we are a CTO consultancy firm that acts as an intermediary managing the full hiring process on behalf of our client. Our client is a 10+ year old technology-driven organisation in the communication space, building a global communications platform.

Overview

The Vice President of Engineering will own the end-to-end engineering strategy, execution, and team leadership for a high-scale communications platform company delivering APIs and infrastructure. The role demands a leader capable of driving product velocity, platform reliability, and developer experience across global-scale, cloud-native systems.

Key Responsibilities

  1. Technology Strategy and Architecture

  2. Support and execute the company's technical vision, ensuring scalability, resilience, and innovation in core communications APIs (SMS, voice, ussd,chat, email).

  3. Architect systems for global reliability, low latency, and multi-cloud deployment.
  4. Ensure interoperability and extensibility across all API products.

  5. Oversee security, compliance, and privacy architectures meeting telecom and enterprise standards (SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA where applicable).

  6. Engineering Leadership and Execution

  7. Lead distributed engineering teams spanning platform, infrastructure, DevOps, data, and SDKs.

  8. Establish measurable engineering KPIs covering velocity, uptime, incident response, and delivery quality.
  9. Drive continuous delivery (CI/CD), automation, and modern DevOps practices.

  10. Maintain a high performance engineering culture, balancing velocity and reliability.

  11. Product and Platform Development

  12. Partner with Product and Design to prioritize high-impact platform capabilities and API enhancements.

  13. Translate customer and developer needs into technical roadmaps.
  14. Ensure robust SDKs, documentation, and developer tooling to drive API adoption.

  15. Oversee internal platform services (auth, billing, messaging routing, telemetry, etc.).

  16. People and Organization Development

  17. Recruit, scale, and mentor senior engineering leaders and technical talent.

  18. Define organizational structure supporting growth and innovation.

  19. Foster a culture of ownership, transparency, and technical excellence.

  20. Cross-functional Collaboration and Executive Partnership

  21. Collaborate with the executive team, Product, Security, and GTM teams to align technology direction with market demand.

  22. Communicate engineering progress, risks, and tradeoffs to the executive team and board.
  23. Represent engineering in strategic partnerships and enterprise customer engagements.

Qualifications

  1. Professional Experience

  2. 10+ years of engineering experience, 2+ in executive or senior leadership roles within high-scale SaaS, communications, or API-first companies.

  3. Proven record of building and operating distributed systems at scale.

  4. Deep expertise in: cloud infrastructure (AWS), real-time communication systems, API platform design, and developer ecosystems.

  5. Skills and Abilities

  6. Demonstrated ability to drive innovation and develop cost-effective technology solutions that address complex business needs.

  7. Exceptional communication skills, with a proven ability to lead and organize high-performing teams.
  8. Capability to influence and inspire cross-functional teams to achieve outstanding results.
  9. Extensive technical expertise in diverse technologies, platforms, and architectures.
  10. Strategic thinking capabilities with a knack for translating complex business requirements into scalable technological solutions.
  11. Proficiency in managing budgets and formulating strategic business plans.
  12. Agile and adaptable, with a capacity to respond calmly and swiftly to changes in a fast-paced environment and under high-pressure situations.
  13. Strong project management skills, including resource allocation and effective problem-solving.
  14. Knowledge of agile methodologies, DevOps practices, and contemporary software development processes.
  15. A robust understanding of cybersecurity principles, risk management, and regulatory compliance frameworks.
  16. Strong knowledge of reliability engineering, observability, and modern DevOps automation.
  17. Track record of recruiting and developing high-performing engineering organizations.
  18. Exceptional technical judgment and strategic thinking ability.
  19. Experience working at a high-growth startup is a plus.
  20. Prior experience working on high-scale communications platforms.

  21. Background in telecommunications or real-time event-driven systems.

  22. Education

  23. A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field is required.

  24. A Master's degree or any other relevant postgraduate qualification is highly advantageous.

Compensation

Executive-level package including base salary and annual bonus, aligned with growth-stage technology leadership benchmarks.

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