Principal Engineer - Sandton at Catch

POSITION OVERVIEW

• Our client is looking for a Principal Engineer to be the technical authority for their software platform, responsible for the coherence of their technical vision, architecture, and implementation across several squads that deliver independently.
• This is a technical role first: you'll still get into the code where it matters, and you'll be the person the team leads bring their hardest design problems to.
• Reporting to the Head of Tech, the Principal Engineer will act as the most senior technical voice in the team, ensuring that as the team grows, the platform grows deliberately, with a clear technical direction that supports where the business wants to go.
• Location: Johannesburg — 4 days a week in the Sandton office
• Employment Type: Permanent, full-time

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Technical direction and architecture across the team, setting the standards, patterns, and technical guardrails developers build inside of.
• Implementation style and stack choices, deciding how the team builds, what they build with, and when to change either, and making those calls stick.
• Platform evolution, making considered, evidence-based decisions about how the platform should grow, and bringing the team along on those decisions.
• Technical coherence across squads, making sure the teams aren't drifting apart architecturally, and that patterns learned in one part of the platform get applied consistently across the rest.
• Quality oversight of the team leads' technical work, acting as a design partner to them and reviewing significant architectural decisions.
• Championing test-driven development, code review culture, and the standard of work the team is proud to put its name on.
• Technical breadth, defining standards and giving guidance across the broader stack, not just within a single platform.
• Acting as right-hand to the Head of Tech, trusted to turn business ambition into technical excellence

WHAT YOU BRING

EDUCATION:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, with a strong academic record.

EXPERIENCE:

• 8+ years’ experience in software development, with a track record of shaping how teams build, not only shipping code.
• 5+ years of hands-on Java experience in production environments.
• Experience acting as the senior technical voice across multiple teams, setting architecture, reviewing designs, and defending technical decisions under pressure.
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and deployment workflows on GitHub.
• Experience with test-driven development and modern engineering practice.
• Practical experience introducing AI-assisted engineering into how teams work.

ADDED VALUE

• Hands-on Salesforce / Apex experience.
• Salesforce certifications: Platform Developer I, Platform Developer II, Application Architect, System Architect, or Technical Architect.

BONUS POINTS

• Experience with penetration testing and security-conscious engineering.
• Front-end development skills.
• Integration architecture and RESTful API design at scale.

COMPETENCIES:

• Architecture decisions across the squads ladder up to a coherent technical strategy that you've authored and the team has bought into, with the platform evolving deliberately.
• Technical excellence is pervasive across the team; AI is being used effectively in how the team builds, and development velocity is increasing.
• The team leads treat you as the technical partner they bring their hardest design problems to, and their technical work is sharper because you're in it.
• You're a trusted partner to the Head of Tech, shaping the technology roadmap and helping the business make the right calls.