What we’re looking for;
In keeping with our current business needs, we are looking for a person who meets the criteria indicated below
Reporting to the Chief Financial Services Officer, the role purpose is as highlighted below;
The Lead API & Developer Marketplace is accountable for building and scaling the organisations and M-PESA's Financial Services platform exposure layer — defining how fintech capabilities are externalised, monetised, and adopted through APIs and a structured developer ecosystem. The role drives the platform ambition of the FS cluster by ensuring M-PESA's fintech capabilities are exposed through modern, scalable, secure, and interoperable APIs that enable ecosystem innovation while strengthening revenue growth and platform monetisation.
A critical design principle of this role is its boundary with Product: Product defines core capabilities; this role defines exposure, scalability, and ecosystem access. The API Lead productises APIs as managed commercial assets, operates the Developer Marketplace as a growth platform, and governs monetisation frameworks that contribute to EBITDA targets without duplicating Product's commercial ownership.
Operating within agile delivery structures, the Lead aligns API squads with DevSecOps principles to ensure reliability, security, compliance, and high-performance standards — while partnering with Product, Growth, Technology, and Commercial teams to ensure APIs amplify capability, not duplicate it.
The role leads the evolution of the Developer Marketplace as a commercial platform, enabling third-party developers, enterprises, and ecosystem partners to build on Safaricom’s fintech infrastructure. It ensures a strong developer experience (DX), structured onboarding processes, transparent documentation, sandbox environments, and commercial clarity that accelerates partner activation and platform adoption. Operating within agile delivery structures, the Lead aligns API squads with DevSecOps principles to ensure reliability, security, compliance, and high-performance standards across exposed services. The role ensures that APIs are productized with clear lifecycle governance, version control, scalability standards, and monetization frameworks, balancing speed of innovation with platform stability and regulatory requirements.
The Lead embeds monetization governance across API usage, ensuring that exposure models, pricing frameworks, and revenue-sharing mechanisms are aligned to cluster EBITDA targets without overlapping with Product monetization ownership. The role works in close partnership with Product, Growth, Technology, and Commercial teams to ensure APIs amplify capability rather than duplicate it, and that platform growth is economically disciplined and strategically aligned. The role also drives alignment between fintech roadmap evolution and API scalability strategy, ensuring that new products and agreed big bets are platform-ready from inception. It translates product needs into exposure architectures that enable ecosystem scalability while maintaining interoperability, performance, and security standards.
Thus, the Lead API & Developer Marketplace is strategically accountable for:
Platform Strategy & API Exposure Architecture: Define and evolve the organisation wide platform exposure strategy, ensuring fintech capabilities are externalized through scalable, interoperable APIs that enable ecosystem growth while aligning with the cluster roadmap. API Productization & Lifecycle Governance: Lead the productization of APIs as managed platform assets, establishing lifecycle standards, version governance, security protocols, and performance benchmarks that ensure reliability, scalability, and regulatory compliance. Developer Marketplace Growth & Ecosystem Enablement: Build and scale the Developer Marketplace by strengthening developer experience (DX), structured onboarding, documentation standards, and ecosystem engagement models that accelerate third-party adoption and platform usage. Monetization Governance for Platform Exposure: Establish commercial guardrails for API monetization, including usage models, pricing principles, and revenue-sharing frameworks, ensuring platform exposure
Anchored in Safaricom’s purpose of transforming lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities, and people to information, the Lead API & Developer Marketplace ensures that Financial Services evolves from product-centric offerings to a scalable, ecosystem-powered platform that expands access, innovation, and sustainable revenue growth.contributes sustainably to revenue growth and EBITDA targets without duplicating Product monetization ownership.
Agile API Squads & DevSecOps Alignment: Align API squads with agile delivery principles and DevSecOps standards to ensure secure, high-performance, continuously deployable APIs that balance innovation speed with platform stability and risk management. Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance: Leads empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, operating within clearly defined decision rights and escalation protocols. Champions iterative delivery and hypothesis-driven experimentation while balancing speed with regulatory, financial, and operational guardrails to ensure responsible, outcome-led execution.
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