Engineering Lead, Systems Engineer

About us:

Ninety One is an independent, active global asset manager withR3,4 trillion
* of assets under management.

Established in South Africa in 1991, as Investec Asset Management, the firm started offering domestic investments in an emerging market. In 2020, almost three decades of organic growth later, the firm demerged from Investec Group and became Ninety One.

Our distinctive capabilities sit within differentiated fixed income and credit as well as specialist equities, and we have a unique perspective and approach to investment opportunities presented by emerging markets and the energy transition.

* as at31 December 2025

Ninety One is an equal opportunities employer. Our imperative is to attract and retain the best talent by providing a corporate environment where people from varying backgrounds can develop professionally and build a rewarding career.

Ninety One’sDigital Technology team is currently recruiting for a dynamic and multi-skilled individual who is passionate about technology to lead the ongoing engineering effortof Ninety One’s Investment Platform. This role requires a strong emphasis onAI-driven process innovation, engineering excellence, and empathetic leadership. The successful candidate needs to be a visionary and disciplined professional who continuously seeks to reinvent engineering practices using AI, while aligning with industry standards and business goals.

Detailed Architecture Design, Oversight & Technical Governance

• Work with the Platform Solution Architect to provide hands-on oversight of detailed architecture and design across engineering squads.
• Ensure alignment with strategic architectural direction while bridging the gap between high-level architecture and day-to-day engineering decisions.
• Review and validate technical analysis outputs before development begins to ensure feasibility, alignment with standards, and accurate estimation.
• Work with product owners and external partners to align API capabilities with client needs and platform strategy.
• Provide technical leadership for external API integrations, ensuring secure, scalable, and well-documented interfaces.

Engineering Enablement, Automation, Productivity & Quality at Scale

• Effectively managing engineering impediments for engineers.
• Continuously evaluating and managing access controls to maintain security and relevance.
• Championing engineering best practices including CI/CD, automated testing, secure coding standards, and preventative quality tooling.
• Defining and enforcing coding standards, peer review protocols, and automated quality gates (e.g., static analysis, performance checks, pipeline enforcement).
• Ensuring quality gates cannot be bypassed under delivery pressure without structured governance.
• Promoting a culture of clean, maintainable, performant, and scalable code.
• Leading initiatives to improve development velocity through intelligent automation and tooling without compromising reliability.
• Identifying, sourcing, and embedding tools that improve engineering quality and prevent production issues before they occur.
• Ensuring engineering output improves in both speed and quality through automation, AI-assisted tooling, and preventative engineering practices.

Platform Security, Resilience & Availability

• Own the roadmap for addressing platform-wide technical debt, including vendor deprecations, mandated upgrades, and Cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
• Collaborate with Info Sec and infrastructure teams to ensure timely remediation of risks.
• Plan and prioritize engineering work that safeguards platform stability and compliance.

Automation & AI-Centred Engineering

• Identifying and implementing AI-assisted tooling for code generation, automated reviews, test generation, performance…