Web3 & Crypto Jobs in South Africa

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.The Consumer team owns the Kraken app experience used by millions of traders and crypto newcomers worldwide, the product that turns someone's first crypto curiosity into a long-term relationship with Kraken. We build the interfaces people actually use to buy, sell, manage their portfolio, and interact with their assets. Our stack is React on web and React Native on mobile, and we ship fast, measure everything, and iterate based on real user behaviour. We work agile, globally distributed, and we care as much about why we build something as how we build it.

We're looking for a world-class Senior Frontend Engineer to join our product-minded engineering team: we care about customer problems, measurable outcomes, frontend craft, and fast iteration. We work across web and mobile surfaces, partner closely with Product, Design, Data, and Platform teams, and use experimentation, observability, and user behaviour to guide what we build next.

The opportunity

• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality consumer-facing features across web (React) and mobile (React Native), owning the full experience from concept to production monitoring.

• Own the full lifecycle of product work, from discovery and technical design through release, monitoring, experimentation, and iteration.

• Drive A/B testing and experimentation strategies forming hypotheses, designing experiments, analysing results, and iterating based on data.

• Partner with Product, Design, Data, and Mobile engineers to create coherent experiences across Kraken’s consumer surfaces.

• Make opinionated technical decisions on framework and architecture choices (we want engineers who have strong views on things like TanStack Router vs Next.js App Router and can back them up with real experience).

• Set the standard for high-quality code — functional correctness, accessibility, performance, and testability are non-negotiables.

• Mentor engineers across seniority levels and contribute to a culture of craft and continuous improvement.

• Lead and collaborate on complex cross-platform initiatives, driving alignment across web and mobile surfaces.

• Stay ahead of the curve on React ecosystem tooling, React Server Components, concurrent features, streaming, and bring those insights back to the team.

• Work AI-natively, we use AI tools across the full SDLC and expect engineers to have a structured, opinionated workflow, not just autocomplete.

What you bring

• 6+ years of professional software development experience with a strong focus on consumer-facing web and/or mobile products.

• Deep expertise in TypeScript and the React ecosystem, you have opinions about state management, data fetching patterns, and component architecture, and you can articulate the trade-offs.

• Production experience with React Native and cross-platform mobile development, including App Store and Google Play release pipelines.

• Experience with Next.js — specifically familiarity with App Router, React Server Components, and the client/server boundary decisions that come with them.

• Hands-on experience with A/B testing, feature flags, and experimentation frameworks (LaunchDarkly, Optimizely, or similar).

• Experience with WebSockets or Server-Sent Events for real-time UI updates.

• Strong testing culture Jest, React Testing Library, Playwright or Cypress, and the judgement to know when to use each.

• Familiarity with modern build tooling (Vite, Webpack, CI/CD pipelines) and performance profiling.

• Experience in fintech, crypto, payments, or other high-trust consumer products where correctness and user confidence matter.

• Strong written and verbal English, you can write a clear RFC, give direct feedback in a PR review, and explain a technical trade-off to a non-technical stakeholder.

• An active AI-assisted development workflow, Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or equivalent with the engineering rigour to review and own what gets produced.

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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