
M-KOPA · London
We're hiring our first Lead Engineer - AI Agents to lead a team that designs, ships, and scales automations and AI agents across M-KOPA. This is a brand-new tea...
We're hiring our first Lead Engineer - AI Agents to lead a team that designs, ships, and scales automations and AI agents across
M-KOPA. This is a brand-new team within the business - the tech foundation is already proven, and now we need someone to lead it,
scale it, and define what it becomes.
The Impact
Your production-grade automations and agents will directly improve how 2,300+ employees work across our global operations. We've
already helped over 10 million customers access over $2 billion in credit - and the tools you build will help that mission scale
further and faster. It's your chance to be part of something that's literally transforming lives across an entire continent 🌍
The Opportunity
inclusion to Africa's Every Day Earners
Africa's fastest-growing for 5 consecutive years (2022–2026)
that can't scale by hiring forever need intelligent tooling that actually works
What You'll Do
At M-KOPA, you'll lead the AI Ops Agents team from day one - owning delivery, growing the function, and proving the value. You'll
work daily with Claude, Claude Code, MCP, and LangChain to build production-grade agents and automations that internal teams
actually use. Your team builds automations and agents for internal use and serves as internal consultants, helping Software
Engineering teams integrate AI into customer-facing products.
develop and improve
customer-facing staff work
Technical Environment 💻
ADK (or similar agentic tooling)
you're building on proven foundations, not starting from zero
Our Approach
What You Need
We're looking for someone with a strong technical background and product-focused mindset. You won't be building models - we have
Data Science teams for that. You'll be building multi-agent systems, shipping production-grade automations, and leading a team
that makes M-KOPA's internal operations smarter and faster.
Why This Role?
This is a brand new team within the business, reporting to the Director of Security. The tech stack is proven - twelve months of
Claude, Claude Code, Notion, HiBob, and Entra automations already running. The team structure is what's new. That's yours to
shape. You'll start with three engineers. Prove the value. Expand from there.
The problems are complex. 2,500+ employees across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, the UK, and Europe. Internal teams
that can't scale by hiring forever. Customer-facing staff who need tools that actually work.
M-KOPA provides affordable financial and digital products to underserved communities across Africa - unlocking access to
smartphones, credit, and insurance for millions of people. The automations and agents you build don't just save time internally -
they help that mission reach more people.
If you want to decide how AI actually gets used at scale across a growing fintech – this is the opportunity.
Location & Benefits
Our Mission 🌍
We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model. We strive
to drive greater inclusion of women, youth, and low-income communities.
Our Impact 💚
Ready to lead a brand-new AI Ops team - shipping agents and automations that drive real-world financial inclusion?
Apply Now
At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job
training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.
Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at m-kopa.com.
Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026), named on
CNBC's World’s Top Fintech Companies 2025 & 2026 and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we've
served over 10 million customers, unlocking $2 billion in cumulative credit for the everyday earners across Africa, in addition to
over 10,000 e-bikes financed in Kenya.
Important Notice
M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women,
minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and
conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice. M-KOPA shall
ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as
internships or apprenticeships.
M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for
‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at
any time during the hiring process.
Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage
during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the
advertised closing date.
If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process, these
include; criminal records, identification verification, academic qualifications, employment dates and employer references.
WHY FACULTY? We established Faculty in 2014 because we thought that AI would be the most important technology of our time. Since then, we’ve worked with over 350 global customers to transform their performance through human-centric AI. You can read about our real-world impact here. We don’t chase hype cycles. We innovate, build and deploy responsible AI which moves the needle - and we know a thing or two about doing it well. We bring an unparalleled depth of technical, product and delivery expertise to our clients who span government, finance, retail, energy, life sciences and defence. Our business, and reputation, is growing fast and we’re always on the lookout for individuals who share our intellectual curiosity and desire to build a positive legacy through technology. AI is an epoch-defining technology, join a company where you’ll be empowered to envision its most powerful applications, and to make them happen. ABOUT THE TEAM Our Public Services Business Unit is committed to leveraging AI for the benefit of individual citizens and the public good. From our work informing strategic government decisions, to optimising our NHS, through to reducing bureaucratic backlogs - we know that AI offers opportunities to drive improvements at every level of Government and we are proud to lead on some of the most impactful work happening in the sector. Because of the nature of the work we do with our Government clients, you may need to be eligible for UK Security Clearance (SC) and willing to work on site with these clients from time to time. ABOUT THE ROLE As a Lead AI/ML Engineer at Faculty, you will set the technical direction for complex AI/ML projects, ensuring models perform at scale and in production over time by balancing technical trade-offs and guiding team priorities. You will lead the delivery of large-scale AI-powered platforms in high-risk environments while defining project roadmaps across multiple complex workstreams. This is an ambitious, entrepreneurial leadership role where you will act as a trusted technical expert, defending your architectural rationale to senior stakeholders to ensure we deliver high-quality, high-value outputs. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING: * Setting the technical direction for complex software projects to ensure architectural decisions support long-term product and client goals. * Driving the development of shared software libraries and microservices that accelerate delivery across multiple client engagements. * Overseeing the delivery of large-scale AI-powered platforms while defining project roadmaps in high-risk environments. * Facilitating alignment between ML, Data Science, and DevOps crafts to ensure agentic software is built on a reliable foundation. * Managing and coaching a distributed team of engineers, setting development goals that align with organisational growth. * Establishing enterprise-wide standards for code delivery, testing, and system documentation across the software engineering craft. * Leading hiring processes for the software engineering craft to continue building a world-class technical team. WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR: * You apply deep expertise across the application lifecycle to set high standards for system integration and end-user software quality. * You design large-scale, complex software ecosystems with the authority to justify critical architectural trade-offs in high-stakes environments. * You define the gold standard for production readiness, establishing application deployment protocols across diverse client engagements. * You translate high-level commercial strategy into technical roadmaps, ensuring AI work-streams are accurately estimated and seamlessly integrated. * You architecturally direct the development of products leveraging autonomous AI agents to ensure they are robust and effectively integrated. * You are a confident communicator, capable of conveying complex technical roadmaps and architectural risks to commercial partners and executive leadership. THE INTERVIEW PROCESS 1. Talent Team Screen (30 minutes) 2. Introduction to the Hiring Manager (30 minutes) 3. Pair Programming Interview (90 minutes) 4. System Design Interview (90 minutes) 5. Commercial & Leadership Interview (60 minutes) #LI-PRIO OUR RECRUITMENT ETHOS We aim to grow the best team - not the most similar one. We know that diversity of individuals fosters diversity of thought, and that strengthens our principle of seeking truth. And we know from experience that diverse teams deliver better work, relevant to the world in which we live. We’re united by a deep intellectual curiosity and desire to use our abilities for measurable positive impact. We strongly encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, religions and sexual orientations. Some of our standout benefits: * Unlimited Annual Leave Policy * Private healthcare and dental * Enhanced parental leave * Family-Friendly Flexibility & Flexible working * Sanctus Coaching * Hybrid Working If you don’t feel you meet all the requirements, but are excited by the role and know you bring some key strengths, please don't hesitate in applying as you might be right for this role, or other roles. We are open to conversations about part-time hours.
Elliptic has helped trace and disrupt over $21.8 billion in illicit crypto laundered across blockchains, from sanctioned nation states to organized crime networks hiding funds through token swaps and unregulated exchanges. It’s how compliance and investigations teams fight back, tracking and screening transactions with 99% market coverage. The infrastructure behind all of this needs to be as resilient and sharp as the intelligence it delivers. We're looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to own and evolve our DevOps practices. This is a role for someone who combines deep technical ability with a genuine passion for growing the team. You'll lead a team of DevOps engineers while staying close to the technical work, setting direction on infrastructure, automation, and reliability. The impact you will have: As a Lead DevOps Engineer at Elliptic, you will have a deep impact across the company by championing DevOps, security, and reliability principles. You’ll help build a culture of automation, efficiency, and continuous improvement, empowering teams to deliver secure, high-quality software with confidence. You’ll work alongside experienced and passionate engineers who enjoy solving tough challenges and learning from one another. This is a hands-on team Lead role where you will balance technical expertise with team leadership. What you will do: * Own the DevOps and Platform roadmap, defining the automation, scaling, and multi-tenant Kubernetes-based Internal Developer Platform (IDP). * Lead by doing - engineer, review, and enhance Kubernetes and CNCF-aligned infrastructure, setting technical standards. * Architect multi-cluster, multi-region environments using Istio/Linkerd, Cluster API, and Kyverno. * Build progressive delivery frameworks with Flux and Flagger for GitOps-driven, canary, and automated releases. * Implement modern provisioning with controllers like Crossplane and ACK for Kubernetes-native cloud integration. * Define and enforce Zero Trust architecture with Vault, Boundary, service identity, and mTLS-secured meshes. * Engineer policy-driven automation and compliance using OPA, Kyverno, and secure supply chain configurations. * Establish IaC and GitOps standards, adding automated testing to every infrastructure change. * Prototype agentic infrastructure components, including deployment and observability platforms in service meshes. * Design AI Gateways and Registries for traffic and event routing between microservices and autonomous agents via CNCF Gateway APIs. * Champion DevSecOps maturity by embedding SAST/DAST, chaos engineering, and error budget monitoring. * Collaborate with Security, Data, and AI teams to shape DevOps and AI platform architectures with regulatory compliance. * Stay ahead of CNCF and AI ecosystem innovations, from eBPF observability to agent-aware orchestration. What We’re Looking For We value diverse backgrounds and paths to expertise. If you bring solid experience in several of the areas below, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every detail. Core Expertise * Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams with the ability to set direction and contribute hands-on. * Strong Kubernetes knowledge, including cluster lifecycle management, API extensions, Operators, Helm, and the broader CNCF ecosystem (Cilium, ExternalDNS, Kyverno, Gatekeeper). * Designing and operating multi-cluster, multi-region Kubernetes platforms with service meshes such as Istio, Consul, or Linkerd and policy-based workload placement. * Writing Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform on AWS or GCP using modular design, GitOps integration, and automated testing (Terratest, InSpec). * Implementing GitOps pipelines with ArgoCD or FluxCD for progressive delivery, drift correction, and multi-environment releases. * Building containerized, serverless, or event-driven systems with strong observability using DataDog, Splunk, or OpenTelemetry. * Strengthening platform security through Vault-based secret management, least privilege access, and compliance automation. * Designing CI/CD workflows that include SAST, DAST, policy enforcement, and performance telemetry. * Improving reliability and resilience through SLOs, error budgets, and chaos engineering. You’ll Thrive Here If You * Are passionate about building secure, scalable, and reliable systems and helping others do the same. * Have a strong customer and product mindset. * Take ownership and make thoughtful, data-informed decisions. * Enjoy building high-performing, inclusive, and autonomous teams. * Align technical leadership with business outcomes. * Collaborate openly and continuously seek to learn and grow. Nice to Have The following are genuinely bonus areas. Great if you have them, but not required. * Leading platform modernisation or reliability initiatives in scale-up or regulated environments. * Experience with Operator development, CRD automation, eBPF, or Cilium for observability. * Expertise in policy-as-code using OPA or Kyverno within secure supply chain or CSPM frameworks. * Exposure to AI-driven internal developer platforms or predictive observability using AI or LLMs. * Experience designing agentic or autonomous infrastructures with observability for AI agents. * Familiarity with MCP and A2A orchestration patterns in Kubernetes service mesh environments. * Understanding of Agent Gateways and Registries connecting microservices and AI agents. * Background in secure containers, sandboxing, or confidential computing for regulated workloads. * Experience with data-intensive systems such as Spark, Databricks, or Data Mesh. * Programming experience in Go, Python, or TypeScript. * Contributions to open-source or CNCF community projects. JOB BENEFITS > How we work: * Hybrid working and the option to work from almost anywhere for up to 90 days per year * £500 Remote working budget to set up your home office space > Learning & Development: * $1,000 Learning & Development budget to use on anything (agreed with your manager) that contributes to your growth and development > Vacation/ Leave: * Holidays: 25 days of annual leave + bank holidays * An extra day for your birthday * Enhanced parental leave: we provide eligible employees, regardless of gender or whether they become a parent by birth or adoption, 16 weeks fully-paid leave and leave. > Benefits: * Private Health Insurance - we use Vitality! * Full access to Spill Mental Health Support * Life Assurance: we hope you will never need this - but our cover is for 4 times your salary to your beneficiaries * Cycle to Work Scheme We know Diversity and Inclusion is much deeper than just hiring, but it’s important for us to mention it here. We welcome and embrace individuals of all backgrounds and identities at Elliptic, and this is an ongoing priority for us. We know incredible people don’t all think in the same way. We want to be challenged every day. We believe our diverse team of individuals underpins this by bringing creative thinking and innovation to Elliptic every day. We are committed to creating a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace, so we welcome applications from everyone, even if you may not think you fit all of the requirements of our roles. We foster an environment of psychological safety, where everyone feels comfortable to bring their whole self to work.
Elliptic has helped trace and disrupt over $21.8 billion in illicit crypto laundered across blockchains, from sanctioned nation states to organized crime networks hiding funds through token swaps and unregulated exchanges. It’s how compliance and investigations teams fight back, tracking and screening transactions with 99% market coverage. The infrastructure behind all of this needs to be as resilient and sharp as the intelligence it delivers. We're looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to own and evolve our DevOps practices. This is a role for someone who combines deep technical ability with a genuine passion for growing the team. You'll lead a team of DevOps engineers while staying close to the technical work, setting direction on infrastructure, automation, and reliability. The impact you will have: As a Lead DevOps Engineer at Elliptic, you will have a deep impact across the company by championing DevOps, security, and reliability principles. You’ll help build a culture of automation, efficiency, and continuous improvement, empowering teams to deliver secure, high-quality software with confidence. You’ll work alongside experienced and passionate engineers who enjoy solving tough challenges and learning from one another. This is a hands-on team Lead role where you will balance technical expertise with team leadership. What you will do: * Own the DevOps and Platform roadmap, defining the automation, scaling, and multi-tenant Kubernetes-based Internal Developer Platform (IDP). * Lead by doing - engineer, review, and enhance Kubernetes and CNCF-aligned infrastructure, setting technical standards. * Architect multi-cluster, multi-region environments using Istio/Linkerd, Cluster API, and Kyverno. * Build progressive delivery frameworks with Flux and Flagger for GitOps-driven, canary, and automated releases. * Implement modern provisioning with controllers like Crossplane and ACK for Kubernetes-native cloud integration. * Define and enforce Zero Trust architecture with Vault, Boundary, service identity, and mTLS-secured meshes. * Engineer policy-driven automation and compliance using OPA, Kyverno, and secure supply chain configurations. * Establish IaC and GitOps standards, adding automated testing to every infrastructure change. * Prototype agentic infrastructure components, including deployment and observability platforms in service meshes. * Design AI Gateways and Registries for traffic and event routing between microservices and autonomous agents via CNCF Gateway APIs. * Champion DevSecOps maturity by embedding SAST/DAST, chaos engineering, and error budget monitoring. * Collaborate with Security, Data, and AI teams to shape DevOps and AI platform architectures with regulatory compliance. * Stay ahead of CNCF and AI ecosystem innovations, from eBPF observability to agent-aware orchestration. What We’re Looking For We value diverse backgrounds and paths to expertise. If you bring solid experience in several of the areas below, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every detail. Core Expertise * Experience leading or mentoring engineering teams with the ability to set direction and contribute hands-on. * Strong Kubernetes knowledge, including cluster lifecycle management, API extensions, Operators, Helm, and the broader CNCF ecosystem (Cilium, ExternalDNS, Kyverno, Gatekeeper). * Designing and operating multi-cluster, multi-region Kubernetes platforms with service meshes such as Istio, Consul, or Linkerd and policy-based workload placement. * Writing Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform on AWS or GCP using modular design, GitOps integration, and automated testing (Terratest, InSpec). * Implementing GitOps pipelines with ArgoCD or FluxCD for progressive delivery, drift correction, and multi-environment releases. * Building containerized, serverless, or event-driven systems with strong observability using DataDog, Splunk, or OpenTelemetry. * Strengthening platform security through Vault-based secret management, least privilege access, and compliance automation. * Designing CI/CD workflows that include SAST, DAST, policy enforcement, and performance telemetry. * Improving reliability and resilience through SLOs, error budgets, and chaos engineering. You’ll Thrive Here If You * Are passionate about building secure, scalable, and reliable systems and helping others do the same. * Have a strong customer and product mindset. * Take ownership and make thoughtful, data-informed decisions. * Enjoy building high-performing, inclusive, and autonomous teams. * Align technical leadership with business outcomes. * Collaborate openly and continuously seek to learn and grow. Nice to Have The following are genuinely bonus areas. Great if you have them, but not required. * Leading platform modernisation or reliability initiatives in scale-up or regulated environments. * Experience with Operator development, CRD automation, eBPF, or Cilium for observability. * Expertise in policy-as-code using OPA or Kyverno within secure supply chain or CSPM frameworks. * Exposure to AI-driven internal developer platforms or predictive observability using AI or LLMs. * Experience designing agentic or autonomous infrastructures with observability for AI agents. * Familiarity with MCP and A2A orchestration patterns in Kubernetes service mesh environments. * Understanding of Agent Gateways and Registries connecting microservices and AI agents. * Background in secure containers, sandboxing, or confidential computing for regulated workloads. * Experience with data-intensive systems such as Spark, Databricks, or Data Mesh. * Programming experience in Go, Python, or TypeScript. * Contributions to open-source or CNCF community projects. JOB BENEFITS > How we work: * Hybrid working and the option to work from almost anywhere for up to 90 days per year * £500 Remote working budget to set up your home office space > Learning & Development: * $1,000 Learning & Development budget to use on anything (agreed with your manager) that contributes to your growth and development > Vacation/ Leave: * Holidays: 25 days of annual leave + bank holidays * An extra day for your birthday * Enhanced parental leave: we provide eligible employees, regardless of gender or whether they become a parent by birth or adoption, 16 weeks fully-paid leave and leave. > Benefits: * Private Health Insurance - we use Vitality! * Full access to Spill Mental Health Support * Life Assurance: we hope you will never need this - but our cover is for 4 times your salary to your beneficiaries * Cycle to Work Scheme We know Diversity and Inclusion is much deeper than just hiring, but it’s important for us to mention it here. We welcome and embrace individuals of all backgrounds and identities at Elliptic, and this is an ongoing priority for us. We know incredible people don’t all think in the same way. We want to be challenged every day. We believe our diverse team of individuals underpins this by bringing creative thinking and innovation to Elliptic every day. We are committed to creating a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace, so we welcome applications from everyone, even if you may not think you fit all of the requirements of our roles. We foster an environment of psychological safety, where everyone feels comfortable to bring their whole self to work.