Senior Front Arena Engineer at Absa South Africa

Job Summary

• 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.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

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.

Solution Design and Technical Ownership

• 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.

Technical Leadership

• 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.

Critical Skills and Experience required

• 8+ years relevant engineering experience, including 5+ years hands-on Front Arena development and Python experience
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience supporting Front Arena deployments within cloud-hosted environments (AWS or Azure).
• Advanced: Front Arena APIs / ACM / AEL / ADFL
• Strong: Front Arena core scripts / Production troubleshooting / Solution design / Version control (preferably Git and GitHub) / CI/CD and automated deployment
• Experience supporting Front Arena within Global Markets environments, including exposure to Fixed Income, FX, Derivatives or Treasury products.
• A hands-on engineer first, rather than purely an architect or manager.
• Comfortable taking ownership of ambiguous technical problems.
• Strong at debugging existing Front Arena implementations.
• Able to understand both business context and technical consequences.
• Pragmatic about when to configure, customise, integrate or escalate to the vendor.
• Comfortable working in a production-critical banking environment.
• Able to communicate clearly with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable providing technical leadership while continuing to write and review code.

Advantageous Experience

• Power BI and data visualization
• Data analysis and reporting
• AI-assisted development tools and automation
• Microsoft Power Platform

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

End Date: November 5, 2026