Specialist Java Product Engineer - Johannesburg at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• The Payments team within CIB Transactional Banking is looking for a Specialist Java Developer to apply critical thinking & problem solving skills to contribute to all phases of the development lifecycle & quickly produce well-organised, optimized, and documented source code to deliver high-performing, scalable, enterprise-grade applications.

Job Description

• As a Java Developer in the CIB Payments team, you will be required to develop software effectively, efficiently, on-time and in alignment with specifications and best-practice architecture. This will include the development of new system components and enhancement on existing components base on defined processes and procedures for all new and existing developed Java applications. This role will also be responsible for fault finding and resolution of software related support calls and feedback to business.

Key accountabilities:

Strategic initiatives

• Continuous improvement of software and systems
• Engage with relevant stakeholders around requirements
• Translation of requirements into technical specifications

Operational

• Design, build, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable code
• Ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of applications
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to mitigate and address these issues
• Help maintain code quality, organization and automation
• Day-to-day development and liaison with DEV manager and developers to ensure technical quality, product quality, and efficient project development
• Hands-on development of features across the development whole stack
• Quality control and systems testing
• Deployment and Integration
• Version control - Booking
• Unit testing

People Management

• Maintain good relationship with development team and business

Stakeholder engagement

• Perform code reviews and provide feedback on all internal and external code.
• Assisting review of system requirements
• Able to effectively communicate at various levels
• Communicating with Business, Solutions and Technical teams to turn business requirements to technical requirements
• Demo applications to stakeholders in business review sessions

Planning

• Demonstrate the ability to adopt a range of strategies to effectively plan and manage IT projects in line with required specifications, within a specified timeframe and cost and to a required level of quality. This could include development, procurement, testing, implementation and evaluation.

Analytical Ability

• Demonstrate the ability to visualise, articulate, and solve both complex and uncomplicated problems and concepts and make the appropriate and most sensible decision based on provided or researched information.

Key critical skills and experience required:

• 5 years relevant development experience
• Java programming language experience
• Work experience as a Java Developer
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science/Software
• Development/Information Technology or equivalent

Preferred experience:

• Experience designing, building and testing Java EE applications
• In-depth knowledge of popular Java frameworks like JSF and Spring MVC
• Strong working knowledge of PostGres/Mysql and/or MongoDB, JavaScript frameworks and Java (J2EE) technologies
• Experience with Object-Oriented Design (OOD)
• Advanced experience in Java and Java Applets in the enterprise development process
• Web programming and user interface design experience
• Excellent communication and delegation skills
• Good time management skills
• Problem-solving abilities
• Expertise in agile and scrum development cycles
• BSc in Computer Science, Engineering or relevant field
• Strong relational database skills (SQL)
• Understanding of building tools like Ant, Maven, Gradle, etc
• Expertise in continuous integration

Other required skills and basic knowledge of:

• JavaServer pages (JSP) and servlets
• Web frameworks like Struts and Spring
• Service-oriented architecture 
• Web Technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, JQuery
• Markup Languages such as XML, JSON
• Abstract classes and interfaces
• Constructors, lists, maps, sets
• File IO and serialization
• Exceptions
• Generics
• Java Keywords like static, volatile, synchronized, transient, etc
• Multithreading and Synchronization
• Good knowledge of Agile methodology
• Banking experience within IT space is preferable
• Angular experience would be beneficial
• Github
• Jenkins
• Rest API development
• Rancher/Openshift

Behavioral competencies required:

• Decision Making
• Problem Identification / Solving
• Accuracy/Attention to detail
• Analytical Reasoning
• Change Agility
• Commitment

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology