DevOps Engineer

Africell, the pan-African mobile telecommunications company, is recruiting a DevOps Engineer, to be based in New York City. About the role: This is a hands-on, build-oriented role for someone who is equal parts engineer, AI practitioner and product-minded problem solver. You will own the technical backbone of a small team that ships internal products used across four African markets. You will partner directly with commercial, retail and customer service leaders. You will not be a back-office function, you will be in the room when problems are framed and you will have the technical solution end-of-the-end: infrastructure, data, models, deployment and iteration. Areas the team is actively building in: Customer Value Management — segmentation, next-best-offer engines, campaign automation.Call center AI — voice and chat agents, sentiment analysis, deflection tooling.ePOS and stock / store management systems for our retail estate.Chatbots and customer service automation across WhatsApp and web.OpCo-facing websites and internal portals.Digitization of commercial workflows that today live in spreadsheets. Role responsibilities: Build with the business: Partner directly with commercial, retail and CS leaders across four markets to scope, prototype and ship the tools that solve their real problems.Own the stack: Design and operate the cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, backend services and MLOps tooling that our products run on. You decide what we use and you make it work.Ship AI that matters: Apply modern AI — LLMs, agents, RAG, classical ML — pragmatically. Pick the right tool for the problem.Write real backend: Design APIs, data models, background jobs, integrations. A lot of what we ship is solid engineering with AI as one component, not the other way around.Keep things safe and reliable: Bake security, observability and cost control into everything. Our markets depend on it.Bring ideas to the table: Spot opportunities the business hasn't seen yet. We want a thinker, not an order-taker. You will work with the Africell’s teams to achieve the contribution to Africell’s mission of bringing affordable, fast, and secure mobile connectivity to millions of customers across Africa. The ideal applicant will also have at least 2 – 4 years’ experience in: Backend engineering experience — comfortable owning APIs, data models, integrations and background processing at production scale.Solid DevOps / Platform Engineering: cloud (AWS, GCP or Azure), containers, infrastructure-as-code, and modern CI/CD.Hands-on experience building and deploying AI / ML in production, including practical work with LLMs, RAG, agents or fine-tuning.Comfortable across the full lifecycle from prototype to production. Strong coding skills, language-agnostic — Python, TypeScript / Node, C# / .NET, Java are all welcome.Creative, open-minded, and pragmatic. You propose options, you enjoy ambiguity, and you are not precious about your first idea.Excellent communication. You can sit with a commercial manager, understand the problem, and translate it — and back again.Willingness to engage with four African markets and to occasionally travel where projects require it.Experience in telecoms, fintech, mobile money, retail tech, or other high-volume consumer businesses.Working knowledge of data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) and orchestration tools (Airflow, dbt).Familiarity with modern web frameworks (Next.js, React) for shipping internal tools quickly.Prior exposure to POS, retail operations or customer service platforms. Why join Africell? Working at Africell gives you the opportunity to be part of something big and meaningful. We are more than a telecommunications company. We are a team committed to transforming African lives, communities, economies, and societies through the marvel of mobile connectivity. Africell has been in Africa for more than twenty-five years. We focus deeply on our core markets and invest in them for the long term. We have a unique profile within Africa’s technology sector. We are creative, innovative, and nimble, and we thrive on overcoming challenges. By joining Africell, you become part of a mission to bridge the digital divide in a region with immense potential. Whether you are in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Gambia, or Sierra Leone, or at our head office in London, your career with Africell will have a real daily impact and give you the chance to contribute directly to Africa’s development. What makes Africell different? Purpose-driven work: Every call connected, every byte of data delivered, and every mobile money transaction completed brings someone closer to opportunity, education or a loved one. Your work truly matters.Growth opportunities: We invest in our people through training, mentorship, and career mobility, including partnerships with some of the world’s top educational institutions.Inclusive culture: We promote and empower local talent and maintain an environment in which diverse perspectives are encouraged.Innovation at heart: We understand our African operating markets, and we tailor our technology and services to meet their specific needs and challenges.Community impact: We support the communities we operate in, not just through mobile services, but through jobs, partnerships, and development initiatives. Your next chapter starts here If you want to operate at the forefront of mobile telecommunications, make a real difference in Africa and grow your career, then Africell welcomes your application. Come build Africa’s digital future with us.