Latest Recruitment at Safaricom Kenya

Job Description

The Finance Officer for Scholarships provides strategic financial oversight and operational excellence for the Scholarship Programme. This role ensures robust financial management, governance, and accountability across all scholarship-related activities. Key responsibilities include developing and managing budgets, forecasting financial requirements, and monitoring expenditure to optimize resource utilization. The position oversees scholarship disbursements and school payments, maintains accurate financial records and reconciliations, and ensures full compliance with institutional policies, donor requirements, and regulatory standards. Additionally, the role drives stakeholder engagement, monitors student eligibility, and champions continuous process improvement to enhance efficiency, transparency, and impact.

Contract Type: This is a fixed-term role for three (3) years, renewable based on performance.

Responsibilities
 Budgeting & Financial Planning

• Develop and manage programme and grant budgets in line with organizational policies.
• Collaborate with Programme Manager to track budgets for key activities (e.g., recruitment, home visits).
• Review scholarship requirements before fund disbursement.
• Prepare cash flow forecasts and provide financial analysis to guide spending decisions.
• Promote financial policy awareness among staff and stakeholders.

Fund Disbursement & Payment Processing

• Oversee accurate and timely disbursement of scholarship funds and stipends.
• Coordinate fee payments to institutions and ensure student eligibility.
• Manage supplier payments and LPOs via Oracle, ensuring proper documentation.
• Communicate payment details to schools and guardians.

 Accounting & Reconciliation

• Record all financial transactions promptly and accurately.
• Reconcile bank accounts, ledgers, and payment records monthly.
• Maintain organized financial documentation for audits and reporting.

Reporting, Compliance & Audits

• Generate timely internal and external financial reports.
• Ensure compliance with policies, tax laws, and regulations.
• Support audit processes and liaise with banks on account matters.
• Monitor student progress for continued scholarship eligibility.
• Recommend process improvements and address financial reporting concerns.

Health and Safety.

• Uphold the company code of conduct, policies and procedures, ensuring integrity and accountability in every aspect of your work.
• All employees have a responsibility to adhere to safety, health, and wellbeing policies, guidelines and procedures in all actions and decisions.

Skills & Competencies

• Advanced knowledge of accounting software and ERP systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle, or similar).
• High proficiency in MS Excel for financial modeling and reporting.
• Familiarity with donor funding guidelines, scholarship administration policies, and statutory financial regulations.
• Ability to interpret complex financial policies.
• Strong analytical and attention-to-detail skills.
• Excellent organizational and time-management abilities.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, Economics, or related field f from a recognized institution of higher learning.
• CPA (K), ACCA, CIMA, or ACA certification preferred.
• At least three years ‘progressive experience in financial management, preferably within education, scholarship programs, or donor-funded projects.
• Proven track record in managing disbursements, reconciliations, and financial reporting for multi-stakeholder programs.
• Experience in process improvement and implementing financial governance frameworks.

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Responsibilities
Application Development & Engineering Excellence

• Design, implement, and maintain secure, scalable microservices using Java (Spring Boot), Python, and / or Go (Golang), Rust, Node.js (Typescript).
• Implement asynchronous event handling, messaging queues, and API orchestration for end-to-end flows.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code with strong unit and integration test coverage.
• Champion modern engineering frameworks such as Microsoft Engineering Playbook.
• Customize and extend Apache Fineract modules for lending, wallets, and savings.
• Design and implement microservices for financial transactions, ensuring scalability and security.
• Integrate Fineract with mobile money platforms, KYC/AML systems, and regulatory APIs.
• Automate deployment and testing of microservices using CI/CD pipelines.

Fintech Platform Integration & Customization

• Customize and extend open-source core banking platforms like Apache Fineract to support lending, wallets, savings, and payment use cases.
• Integrate with mobile money, card networks, KYC/AML, credit scoring, and regulatory reporting APIs.
• Build and expose financial APIs following open banking and ISO 20022 standards.
• Develop adapters and abstraction layers to bridge legacy banking systems and modern services.

DevSecOps & Agile Delivery

• Drive implementation of CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab, SonarQube, JMeter, and GitOps workflows.
• Embed security controls, Telemetry and static/dynamic analysis into the development lifecycle as part of DevSecOps culture.
• Contribute to Agile ceremonies—sprint planning, backlog grooming, retrospectives—and act as a technical voice in estimation and prioritization.

Architecture, Frameworks & Technical Leadership

• Guide technical solution design, aligning with enterprise architecture and standardized engineering frameworks.
• Establish and evolve reusable architectural patterns for APIs, data flows, authentication, and service communication.
• Perform code and design reviews to enforce adherence to engineering standards, performance benchmarks, and security best practices.
• Contribute to platform-wide engineering initiatives such as shared libraries, code generation tools, and build system improvements.

Code Quality, Governance & Support

• Enforce code quality through static analysis, code coverage thresholds, and continuous improvement of development standards.
• Maintain clear and up-to-date technical documentation across services, interfaces, and platform configurations.
• Collaborate with QA and security teams to ensure rigorous testing and secure release cycles.
• Participate in production support, incident resolution, and root cause analysis to uphold platform resilience.
• Track and resolve technical debt and prioritize refactoring efforts during regular engineering cycles.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Demonstrated success building and deploying financial solutions in regulated environments—preferably involving digital wallets, savings, credit, or cross-border payments.
• Experience contributing to system and solution architecture design, technical decision-making, and adherence to enterprise engineering standards. 
• Understanding of AI/ML fundamentals and practical application in software engineering workflows.

Backend Development & Architecture

• Hands-on experience designing and building production-grade backend systems in Java (Spring Boot), with additional proficiency in Python or C# for service-oriented and event-driven architectures.
• Advanced understanding of microservices patterns, including API gateway design, service mesh, circuit breakers, and distributed tracing.
• Core Banking & Fintech Platform Integration
• Proven track record customizing and integrating open-source core banking platforms such as Apache Fineract, or proprietary equivalents.
• Experience with financial services workflows like digital lending, wallet transfers, savings automation, and transaction reconciliation.
• Familiarity with ISO 20022, SWIFT, and open banking standards (e.g., PSD2 APIs).

APIs, Messaging & Distributed Systems

• Proficient in building RESTful APIs, GraphQL endpoints, and gRPC services, with strong understanding of serialization (JSON, Protocol Buffers).
• Experience with event-driven systems, using Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS for decoupling and real-time data exchange.
• Familiarity with API security standards such as OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and mutual TLS authentication.

Data & Persistence Layer

• Deep understanding of data modelling, schema design, and performance tuning for relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).
• Experience with NoSQL technologies like MongoDB, Cassandra, or Redis for high-velocity or schema-less data.

DevSecOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure Automation

• Strong command of DevSecOps practices, embedding security scanning and compliance checks throughout the SDLC.
• Skilled in CI/CD pipeline setup and management using Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions, with integrated tools like: SonarQube, Checkmarx, OWASP ZAP, Snyk, Fortify, Nexus, Artifactory
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows, Canary deployments, and blue/green strategies using ArgoCD or Flux.

Cloud-Native Engineering & Observability

• Experience deploying and operating applications on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, leveraging managed services (RDS, Cloud Functions, S3, IAM).
• Proficient with containerization using Docker, orchestration via Kubernetes, and secure Helm-based deployments.
• Setup and tuning of observability stacks including Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, and OpenTelemetry for metrics, logging, and tracing.

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Deep knowledge of secure coding standards, OWASP Top 10, and regulated data handling (e.g., PCI-DSS, GDPR).
• Experience implementing role-based access control (RBAC), JWT management, and audit logging.
• Proven ability to work within regulated fintech environments, ensuring systems meet audit, compliance, and risk controls.