Tech Lead South Africa

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:-

The Tech Lead role at Sanlam Fintech x involves providing technical leadership, mentorship, and innovation within the fintech agile team. The main responsibilities include ensuring technical direction, leading and mentoring team members, creating high-quality, scalable code, and utilizing modern tech stacks. The ideal candidate should have 8+ years of software development experience, including at least 3 years in a technical leadership role, and possess expertise in cloud environments, backend technologies, microservices, and DevOps practices.

Position Overview

Sanlam Fintech x, a dynamic division within the Sanlam Group, is seeking to appoint a Technical Lead. This role involves overseeing significant components, feature sets, or entire applications. A successful Technical Lead typically boasts 8-10 years or more of software engineering expertise and a minimum of 3 years in a managerial or coaching capacity. This position requires close collaboration with Design and Product Management and may encompass broader organizational contributions. The Technical Lead provides guidance in planning, reviews, and problem-solving, offering technical writing support and contributing to the overall vision and system architecture.

What You Will Do

Reporting directly to the CTO, the Technical Lead will spearhead technical leadership, mentorship, and innovation within the fintech agile team.

Key Responsibilities Include

Technical Direction: Ensure that team deliverables align with strategic technical decisions, delivering scalable, high-quality solutions Leadership & Mentorship: Develop team members through coaching and cultivate top-tier engineering talent Code Excellence: Create robust, maintainable code in a collaborative, cross-functional setting Modern Tech Stack: Utilize state-of-the-art technologies to build scalable, distributed systems Ideal for fintech pioneers eager to disrupt the finance sector, this role blends hands-on development with stakeholder engagement, steering projects from inception to completion while optimizing team productivity and communication. Join us in revolutionizing finance through technology.

Qualifications and Experience

A relevant bachelor’s degree or diploma 8+ years of software development experience, including at least 3 years in a technical leadership role (e.g., Tech Lead, Senior Engineer, Architect) Proven experience in designing, building, and scaling distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP) Strong expertise in modern backend technologies (e.g., Java, Python, Node.js, Go) and frontend frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) Experience with microservices, event-driven architectures, and API design (REST/gRPC/GraphQL) Hands-on experience with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ) Familiarity with DevOps practices (CI/CD, IaC, Kubernetes, Docker) and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) Leadership & Mentorship: Ability to inspire, guide, and grow engineering teams Fintech/banking experience (payments, lending, wealth management) is a plus Strong problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills

What Will Make You Successful

This role demands extensive experience in designing, developing, and testing distributed, high-volume, and highly reliable software. A deep understanding of requirements and excellent communication skills for explaining technical solutions are essential. Business and operational awareness, along with experience with cloud-based infrastructure, preferably AWS, are also required.

At Sanlam Fintech, we offer a lot in return for what we ask. You’ll enjoy:

Working with intelligent, driven individuals in an engaging virtual environment Making a real social impact through your work Continuous growth and learning, supported by ample encouragement and resources Navigating uncharted territory with courage Tackling exciting challenges with international teams Enjoying flexible work practices that allow you to deliver your best Having the autonomy and empowerment to lead Being at the forefront of technology and innovation

Required Behavioral Competencies

SFTx’s 6 Leadership Principles:

Ownership Mindset – Seeking ways to do rather than finding reasons not to. Being accountable for actions and decisions, owning both successes and mistakes, and learning and growing from each experience. Growth Mindset – Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth. Customer Centricity – A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback, and their behaviors. Innovation (Jugaad) – Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change. Velocity – Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results. Inclusion – Seeking out and valuing different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes, making tomorrow not just different, but better.