Senior Front Arena Engineer

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time. With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Belonging at Absa Absa is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from suitably qualified individuals from diverse backgrounds. In support of our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) commitments and Employment Equity objectives, preference may be given to candidates from underrepresented designated groups, including persons with disabilities. We encourage applicants who may require reasonable accommodation during the recruitment process to let us know so that appropriate support can be provided.

Provide engineering capability for the CIB Front Arena platform. The role requires a hands‑on engineer who can take ownership of complex Front Arena development and technical problem solving across the full delivery lifecycle, from understanding a business problem and designing the solution through to development, testing, implementation and production support. The successful candidate must have strong development experience within Front Arena, combined with Python engineering skills and an understanding of Corporate and Investment Banking.

The role will work closely with business stakeholders and product teams to ensure the Front Arena platform continues to meet evolving Global Markets requirements.

• Front Arena Engineering Design, develop, enhance and support solutions within Front Arena.
• Develop and maintain Front Arena core scripts, including components such as FValidation.
• Develop solutions using Python, ACM/AEL, ADFL, ATS, ADS, AMBA/AMB and relevant Front Arena APIs.
• Troubleshoot complex business‑raised production issues across batch and process functionality, perform root‑cause analysis, and implement sustainable fixes.
• Participate in Front Arena upgrades and migrations (e.g. Cloud).
• Ensure Front Arena solutions are performant, maintainable and aligned with platform standards.

• Translate business requirements into robust Front Arena technical solutions.
• Provide technical direction for complex enhancements and platform changes.
• Assess whether requirements should be addressed through standard Front Arena capabilities, configuration, scripting, integration or custom development.
• Challenge designs that introduce unnecessary customisation, performance issues or long‑term support risk.
• Review technical designs, solution approaches and code before production implementation.
• Own complex problems through to resolution rather than relying on detailed technical direction from others.
• Engage with the Front Arena vendor where product expertise or vendor intervention is required.
• Working with version control, branching, merging, pull requests, and team‑based development workflows.

• Act as a senior technical authority for Front Arena engineering.
• Review technical designs, solution approaches and code before production implementation.
• Establish and reinforce development standards and engineering practices.
• Mentor engineers with less Front Arena experience.
• Support technical analysis of high‑severity incidents.
• Identify systemic problems rather than repeatedly implementing tactical fixes.
• Improve documentation and reduce dependency on individual technical SMEs.
• Work effectively with Product, Business, Support, Infrastructure, Data and other engineering teams.