Senior Software Engineer (Python,Backend) at Santam Insurance

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to lead the design, development and maintenance of key parts of the core insurance platform. Your ultimate goal is to ensure we utilise the latest trends and technologies in software engineering to continuously improve our backend services and applications. You enjoy moving fluidly between design, development, testing, debugging, performance optimisation, and leading complex technical projects from start to finish. You will report to the Head of Technology and work daily with a squad of designers, engineers and testers. You will be part of an Engineering team that will be growing to 14 team members by 2024. You’ll work closely with the other parts of the business (actuarial, marketing, operations and product) and the rest of the Engineering team, to deliver on our technology goals.

The Team

• The Engineering team builds and operates a modern, cloud-first digital insurance platform at the core of Santam Switch.
• The team owns the business layer, insurance engine and APIs that power our mobile app and partner integrations.
• The Engineering team has five main functional areas/disciplines:

Platform Engineering: Builds the insurance platform at the core of Santam Switch.
Cloud Engineering: Builds the core cloud infrastructure that underlies our platform.
Mobile Engineering: Builds Android and IOS mobile apps using React, Swift and Kotlin.
Quality Assurance: Responsible for quality across the entire platform.
IT Operations: Responsible for ensuring the smooth and secure operation of IT services
 
The development philosophy:

• We follow Agile software development best practices and deliver software in Sprints.
• We believe in an iterative, design-thinking approach to product development and delivery.
• We automate what we can, keep meetings to a minimum, and have a continuous focus on quality and customer-centricity.

The Culture:

• We take responsibility for deliverables and treat each other with respect. We are building a business where the following are valued:
• Take ownership, be accountable
• Reasoned argument
• Respect
• Foster the team’s growth and have fun
• Leadership is a role, not a rank

 
The Environment and Benefits

• Start-up environment within a leading insurance corporate.
• Market-related compensation.
• State-of-the-art hardware to work on (e.g. Macbook Pro).
• Training resources.
• Remote-first.
• Access to co-share offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town that allow us to connect in person and ideate around a whiteboard.
• Flexible working hours.
• Generous leave to balance your work and life.
• Group benefits (life insurance, disability insurance, etc.).

Responsibilities:

• Improve the quality of the platform.
• You will own the key performance indicators of the platform and drive their visibility and use to continuously improve our code, architecture and processes.
• This can mean: paying down technical debt, rearchitecting old design decisions, and improving performance and resilience. 
   

Extend the platform:

• You will build new capabilities of the platform that empower our users.
• You will lead the architecture design and decision-making for your area of the platform. 
   

Improve our team:

• You will share your experience and knowledge.
• You will improve our documentation, and document your design decisions and rationale.
• You will mentor your fellow engineers.

Our Ideal Candidate:

• 5+ years of software development experience (e.g. Software Engineer).
• Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field or equivalent professional experience.
• Expert-level Python mastery (knows the language intricacies, design, ecosystem, and libraries). You’ll be expected to be code-productive in minimal time.
• You would be expected to fulfil the role of a Python subject-matter expert and provide mentorship on Python best practices to the rest of the team.
• Extensive experience with cloud services. We use Amazon Web Services for all our infrastructure and service needs so relevant experience with AWS is important.
• Experience with Linux and creating and running containerised applications (e.g. with Docker).
• SQL knowledge and experience are required.
• Experience in Insurance or Financial Services is advantageous.
• Experience in a start-up environment is advantageous.