Principal Engineer - Cape Town at SPAN Digital Innovation

Scope of Responsibility 

• Principal engineers can integrate lessons learned and experience gained from their many years of practice into the problems they solve every day. They can apply their experience appropriately in a broad set of situations. Principal engineers are seasoned professionals capable of scoping and designing entire systems. They are able to do very well continuously over extended period of time and show improvement.

Growing Engineers and the Engineering Discipline

• Principal Engineers are responsible for mentoring engineering staff and providing on the job training. They are expected to contribute to and drive the development of the engineering community at SPAN.

Engaging Stakeholders

• Principal Engineers are experienced at engaging clients and customers. They are able to lead  the scoping and design discussions and arrive at satisfactory solutions. Principals are able to explain risks and trade-offs and act as a trusted advisor to clients and customers.  

Technical Mastery 

• Principals have experience in all aspects of the product development lifecycle, from inception through design, development, testing, deployment, and support. They can demonstrate working knowledge of a broad range of technical areas and deep expertise in a few. They have excellent problem analysis and solving skills with the ability to innovate and abstract detail into larger patterns and systems.

Leadership

• Principals provide leadership by taking responsibility for the technical aspects of major projects or products. They are responsible for overseeing the tasks of our engineers. This oversight involves planning, estimation, resource management, issue resolution and quality assurance. 

Tolerance of Continuous change

• Principals thrive in an environment characterized by its fast pace and its high level of collaboration. Principal engineers are typically assigned to multiple projects, and are constantly thinking of the business, and looking for new opportunities within the accounts they look after.

Typical Activities 

• Facilitate and lead solution and system architecture and design sessions
• Help our clients define their needs, goals and objectives
• Factor an understanding of our clients and customers needs into our solutions
• Become a strategic advisor to clients and customers
• Foster a trusting and collaborative relationships with our clients and customers 
• Work with design and other disciplines to achieve the broad business goals
• Define development best practices and ensure they are followed
• Solve the hardest technical problems or find someone who can.
• Maintain and grow our culture
• Contribute to the development of the engineering discipline
• Remove technology blockers from the team
• Identify cases of bottlenecks and make changes to fix them
• Mentor engineering staff and help them execute their growth plans
• Create effective teams that maximise abilities, growth, collaboration and innovation
• 1:1s with tech team members
• Resolve conflicts in the team
• Attend and contribute in external technical forums

You’ll love it here if:

• You are allergic to hierarchical, bureaucratic, business-card cultures
• You're sad many of the greatest minds in our generation are busy tricking people into clicking on ads
• You want to work with very smart people from different backgrounds
• You are a voracious learner & an eager teacher of others
• You want to be led from the front, not commanded from the rear
• You don't tolerate intra-office posturing or other douchebaggery
• You're excited to work on a broader array of interesting, challenging projects than you can  anywhere else