Software Engineer II

Who are we?

Sanlam Fintech is a newly established digital first business within the Sanlam Group on a mission to democratize financial advice and solutions for everyone across the African continent. We exist to pioneer inclusive financial confidence helping people build strong foundations to bridge the gap in generational wealth. Our culture is that of agility and constant deployment, we believe in learning fast, learning cheap and learning forward.

Our aim is to provide a work environment where knowledge workers can accelerate the development of their ideas and bring innovation to market, at the same time provide compelling career and development proposition that will enable them to realize their dreams.

A Software Engineer II that can take responsibility for new features and solve problems in any part of the code. They typically have 5 years or more of software engineering experience. They may lead a feature implementation but will need help with strategy and require guidance from mentors and peers. They should work with Design and Product Management to improve features across the product and troubleshoot any bugs.

Expectations:

• Take ownership of new features and deliver them from concept to production
• Work independently and create solutions without constant direction
• Effectively collaborate with the team to bring out the best in others
• Focus on operational and code excellence during code reviews and feature development
• Improve the team's development, testing and operational practices
• Begin to work with Product Management and Design teams to understand business context
• Participate actively in on‑call rotations and handle incidents effectively
• Identify and address small pieces of technical debt within their work scope
• Demonstrate growing influence beyond individual tasks to impact the broader team

• Relevant Degree or Diploma in
  
  B.Sc. in Computer Science and IT
• 5 years of experience in Software Engineering

• Despite our language agnostic approach, proficiency in languages used in full‑stack / back‑end Software Development (Python, Java, C++ etc for example) is required
• Proficiency at reading, reviewing, understanding code
• Ability to articulate language differences, implementation and the build & execution process:
  For example strongly vs weakly typed, static vs dynamic, compiled vs interpreted

• Ability to articulate the pros / cons of relevant data structures for the use of minimum memory space and execution in the shortest possible time. This includes situations in which a data structure would be applicable, and why
• Ability to suggests possible / relevant algorithms when developing and optimising solutions for time and space complexity. This includes the ability to discuss options and trade‑offs; also in instances where scope increases and solutions have to adapt

• Understanding of scalability, robustness, operational visibility and agility
• Understanding of distributed systems and designing these solutions
• Experience working on projects involving the design and implementation of scalable systems
• Knowledge of services like AWS VPC, Auto Scaling, serverless computing, storage (EBS, S3), containers, DNS, etc) is preferred yet not a prerequisite. All experience with relevant Cloud-based technologies are beneficial in this role.
• Understanding of / experience in monitoring, metrics, visibility, health, fault tolerance
• Experience with / understanding of load balancing and health checking
• Experience with / understanding of APIs, auth
• Experience with / understanding of databases and persistence
• Experience with / understanding of scalable architecture for systems implementation

• Gain a solid understanding of design principles and how to apply them
• Develop the ability to lead small projects or components with minimal supervision
• Enhance problem‑solving skills and technical knowledge across the codebase
• Contribute to improving team practices and processes
• Show skill in coaching junior engineers and providing…