Software Engineer (Python) at takealot.com

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• As a Software Engineer, you will be someone whose expertise directly translates into developing robust software in the e-commerce domain. You will have the opportunity to implement best practices to improve existing software and participate in the development of new features.
• While we don't promote after-hours work as part of the regular workday, we run a 24/7 business with the need to keep systems up and running.
• Software Engineers are expected to provide after-hours support on a rotational basis to resolve critical system issues if needed.
• Design and build solutions to assist our business users and improve customer experience
• Architect and design solutions with your team
• Develop code, making major improvements to non-functional areas
• Develop high-quality production code for work of high complexity and scale
• Utilize and improve functional and non-functional testing practices
• Champion, challenge, and iterate on best practices within engineering
• Design solutions for complex problems with difficult decision trade-offs, typically system or domain-wide
• Participate in and collaborate on architecture proposals across engineering
• Support alignment of architecture across the organisation
• Respond to and resolve bugs in production for systems in your division
• Respond to alerts and support incident response within your division
• Investigate and drive the resolution of issues that impact multiple teams
• Support, challenge existing, and define new engineering processes and directives
• Review and contribute fixes and content to internal documentation
• React to technology trends, identifying risks and opportunities for your division's technologies, systems, and domains
• Share knowledge through blog posts, tech talks, and workshops across engineering
• Contribute to discussions and decisions in the division
• Challenge others to always produce work of the highest quality
• REST and RPC API implementation and maintenance (using Python)
• Develop and maintain automation tests
• Liaise with various internal stakeholders to discuss project requirements, progress, etc.

The skills we need:

• Solutions-oriented, can-do attitude, and high energy
• Strong analytical and critical thinking, using data to inform decisions
• Ability to dis-aggregate and structure solutions to ambiguous problems
• Solid quantitative skills
• Capability to present ideas succinctly, in writing and verbally
• Versatile and with the appetite to learn by doing

Qualifications & Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or an Advanced Diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 5 to 10 years in a software development role
• A thorough understanding of computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
• Experience in writing robust, efficient production code
• Proficient in a strongly typed open source language such as Python, Java, Golang, etc
• Exposure to RESTful APIs and web services.
• Experience with SQL database systems
• Experience with development in a Linux environment

Experience in the following will be advantageous:

• Familiarity with microservices architecture 
• Experience working in an Agile environment 
• MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL
• Memcached, Redis
• Message Brokers, Queues, and PubSub systems (e.g., Kafka and RabbitMQ)
• Containerisation (e.g., Docker)
• Orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes)
• GitHub, Travis CI, Jenkins
• AWS, GCP, Azure
• JavaScript, React, jQuery