Lead: Platform Engineering and Architecture at Genesis Analytics

Purpose of the role

• This is a senior executive role responsible for designing, establishing, and leading a high-performance digital development capability for the South African government. The primary objective is to drive the critical transition of government legacy systems into a modern, scalable "platform" capable of enabling large-scale, citizen-centric service delivery. The successful candidate may be strategically placed directly within a key government department to lead the engineering of priority digital infrastructure from the inside.

Team Building and Leadership

• The Digital Development Squad: You will be tasked with designing, establishing, and operationalizing a specialized, multidisciplinary squad of approximately 10 high-caliber professionals. This team will include full-stack engineers, DevOps/Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), User-Centered Design (UCD)/Product leads, and data engineers and others..
• End-to-End Leadership: Proven experience leading these multidisciplinary engineering teams through the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is essential. Will be required to put in place clear accountability and decision-making arrangements appropriate to complex public-sector environments.

Key Responsibilities & Deliverables

• Transforming Culture: Build and sustain a high-cadence culture of implementation utilizing Agile/Scrum methodologies and modern Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices. You must possess the unique ability to instill this agile discipline and speed within a traditionally bureaucratic environment.
• Hands-on Technical Leadership: Provide direct mentorship to your team, stepping in to unblock the squad and resolve complex implementation hurdles.
• Architecture & Modernization: Drive the adoption of cloud-native environments. You will drive the government's transition away from legacy systems by designing and managing complex system integrations utilizing micro-services and API-led architectures.
• AI-Driven Acceleration: Actively integrate and utilize agentic AI to fast-track the software development lifecycle and automate routine, repetitive engineering tasks.
• Codification and Mainstreaming: Codify standards, playbooks, and reusable approaches that strengthen system-wide delivery capability and support replication in other parts of government.

Candidate Profile & Technical Competencies

• Experience Profile: The ideal candidate possesses a CTO or VP of Engineering pedigree. You must have a demonstrable track record of building, scaling, and maintaining platforms in high-demand, complex sectors such as Financial Services, eCommerce, or Telecommunications.
• Education: A postgraduate qualification in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field is required.
• Tech Pedigree: Deep, practical experience in developing scalable platforms from the ground up and successfully managing complex system-to-system integrations.
• Modern Architecture Mastery: Expert-level command and practical application of Cloud-First strategies, micro-services architecture, and API-led design principles.
• Methodology Mastery: Absolute mastery of Iterative and Agile development frameworks.
• AI Proficiency: A strong, practical understanding of how to deploy agentic AI tools within a modern engineering team's workflow.

Key Performance Areas (KPAs)

Your success in this role will be measured against the following metrics:

• Technical Velocity: Successfully delivering high-impact, priority digital initiatives rapidly, while strictly meeting quality benchmarks and user adoption targets.
• Interoperability: The successful creation and reuse of shared digital "building blocks" (APIs, micro-services) across different government departments to reduce redundancy.
• Team Health: Establishing and maintaining a fully staffed, high-performing engineering squad with demonstrably high morale and retention rates.