Software Development Manager: Digital Platforms (Sandton) at Sun International

Job Purpose

• The Software Development Manager – iGaming Systems is responsible for leading the engineering teams that deliver both the client-facing and backend platform components of the iGaming product.
• This includes mobile and web applications, middleware services, account systems, and integrations with third-party game providers, payment systems, and regulatory platforms.
• This role requires a strategic thinker and hands-on leader who can balance delivery, technical excellence, and people development. The manager will ensure that engineering efforts are aligned with product goals, regulatory requirements, and operational standards, while fostering a high-performance, collaborative engineering culture.

Job Scope & Responsibilities

• Provide architectural guidance across frontend and backend systems, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and maintainable
• Drive consistency in engineering standards, coding practices, and technical documentation across teams
• Review and approve technical designs to ensure alignment with platform strategy and long-term technical direction
• Promote best practices in system performance, reliability, observability, and cost efficiency
• Lead and mentor team leads and their engineering groups, providing coaching, direction, and support
• Drive performance management, career development planning, and succession management in alignment with organizational goals
• Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, continuous improvement, and high psychological safety
• Promote inclusion, collaboration, and strong team cohesion across distributed engineering teams
• Own the engineering delivery roadmap for client-facing and middleware features, ensuring alignment with product strategy
• Coordinate cross-team sprint planning, backlog prioritization, and release management activities
• Ensure timely, high-quality, and compliant product releases through effective cross-functional collaboration
• Collaborate with Product Management, Design, QA, and Compliance to set priorities, manage dependencies, and ensure clear communication
• Oversee integrations with external game content providers, payment gateways, KYC/AML services, and regulatory platforms
• Ensure platform readiness for new game launches, promotions, and regional compliance updates
• Work closely with legal, compliance, and vendor stakeholders to manage external dependencies and ensure regulatory adherence
• Monitor system health, performance metrics, and incident response across services, driving proactive improvements
• Lead initiatives to strengthen observability, reliability, alerting, and operational efficiency
• Implement and maintain robust logging, monitoring, and alerting frameworks
• Ensure adherence to regional regulations (e.g., GDPR, responsible gaming, anti-fraud) and internal governance standards

Requirements

Education

• Bachelor’s in Computer science, Software Engineering, or related field required
• Master’s in Computer science, Software Engineering, or related field advantageous

Experience

• 10 years of software engineering experience, inclusive of 3 years in a leadership role
• Proven experience managing multiple engineering teams or team leads.
• Strong understanding of both frontend/mobile and backend/middleware technologies.
• Experience in regulated industries such as iGaming, fintech, or telecoms.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Solid knowledge of agile methodologies and software development lifecycle (SDLC)
• Familiarity with microservices, event-driven architecture, and distributed systems
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and modern observability tools

Behavioural Competencies

• Strategic Thinking
• Managing Customer & Stakeholder relationships
• Applying expertise and technology
• Collaborating & Communicating
• Agile & Adaptable
• People Development
• Innovation

Technical Competencies

• Architecture & System Design
• Backend & Middleware Technologies
• Frontend & Client Architecture
• Database & Storage
• Cloud, DevOps & Infrastructure
• Monitoring, Observability, Reliability
• Security & Compliance
• Integration & Ecosystem Management
• Engineering & Leadership Governance
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS)