Staff Engineer at Salt South Africa

About the Role:

• We’re seeking a highly experienced Staff Engineer to lead the design, development, deployment, and evolution of enterprise-grade technical solutions. In this role, you’ll serve as a strategic technical authority, driving innovation, architectural direction, and successful delivery of complex initiatives that align with long-term business objectives.
• As a recognised expert in one or more technical domains, you’ll be responsible for guiding teams, setting technical standards, and providing leadership across the organisation. This is a unique opportunity to influence and shape the future of technology in a fast-paced, forward-thinking environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide technical expertise and serve as a subject matter expert in specific technical domains
• Lead the definition and implementation of technical strategies and architectures
• Solve complex technical challenges and assess project risks and feasibility
• Design, develop, and implement large-scale, innovative solutions to meet strategic business needs
• Translate business requirements into scalable, performant, and secure technical solutions
• Guide technical decision-making and establish engineering standards and best practices
• Lead and mentor distributed technical teams to ensure quality and innovation
• Develop reusable code, APIs, and libraries to support scalable system design
• Optimise systems to handle increasing demands and improve efficiency
• Share expertise through technical leadership, communities of practice, and learning programs
• Support recruitment and talent development to build strong internal and external engineering capability
• Engage with internal and external stakeholders, communicating complex technical concepts clearly
• Represent the organisation in industry forums and contribute to its technical brand and visibility

Qualifications & Skills:

• Relevant tertiary qualification or industry certifications
• Minimum Grade 12 National Certificate
• Deep expertise in one or more of the following:
• Software Engineering
• Systems Engineering
• Infrastructure, Security, Cloud & Enterprise Architecture
• Data Ecosystem Architecture (e.g. modelling, warehousing, analytics, platforms)

Experience Required:

• 8+ years of experience across multiple technical domains
• Proven track record of technical leadership on large-scale or complex cross-functional projects
• Strong ability to influence and guide stakeholders at all levels
• Skilled in developing and communicating architectural direction and technical strategy
• Experience mentoring and developing technical teams
• Advantageous: industry presence (e.g., publications, talks, open-source contributions)

Core Competencies:

• Organisational Skills: Leadership, commercial thinking, negotiation, problem-solving, communication, technical judgement
• Technical Skills: Advanced software/system engineering, cloud infrastructure, risk & security, data architecture
• People & Influence: Relationship management, mentoring, team development, cross-functional collaboration