Tech Lead at Sanlam Group

Job Description

• We are looking for an exceptional Tech Lead to lead the engineering of a strategic new Life Annuities technology product. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who wants to build, not simply manage.
• You will shape the technical direction, make key architecture and engineering decisions, lead and develop a high-performing team of engineers, and work closely with Product, Design, Architecture and business stakeholders to turn complex requirements into secure, scalable and resilient technology.
• This is not a conventional project team that builds a solution and hands it over. The team will own the product and its technology across the full lifecycle: design, build, test, deploy, run, manage, enhance and fix.
• We are looking for an accomplished Tech Lead to help mobilise this team and establish the engineering foundations, culture and technical direction required to deliver a secure, scalable and resilient financial services platform.
• You will combine hands-on software engineering, technical leadership and team enablement. You will work closely with Product Management, Architecture, Design, Business and Operations to translate complex customer and commercial requirements into well-designed technology solutions.

What will you do?

Lead the technology and engineering direction

• Define and evolve the technical vision, architecture and engineering roadmap for the product.
• Translate product and business needs into pragmatic, scalable and secure technical solutions.
• Make sound architectural and engineering decisions, balancing immediate delivery with long-term product sustainability.
• Guide system design across applications, services, integrations, data and cloud infrastructure, ensuring alignment with broader SLS Technology architecture, security, data and risk standards.
• Champion modern AI-enabled and agentic software engineering practices, establishing how AI coding agents and automation are used responsibly across design, development, testing, documentation and operations.
• Evaluate opportunities to embed AI and agentic capabilities into the product architecture where they create meaningful customer, operational or engineering value.
• Evaluate other emerging technologies and introduce them where they create measurable customer or engineering value.

Build and lead a high-performing engineering team

• Help recruit, onboard and develop a team of strong software engineers.
• Create an engineering culture grounded in ownership, collaboration, learning and technical excellence.
• Provide hands-on coaching, technical direction and constructive feedback.
• Establish clear engineering standards and create the environment for engineers to do their best work.
• Build capability within the team and support the development of future technical leaders.
• Encourage healthy technical debate, experimentation and continuous improvement.

Remain close to the code

• Contribute directly to critical implementations, prototypes and complex technical problem-solving.
• Review code and system designs, ensuring that solutions are maintainable, testable and fit for purpose.
• Lead the resolution of complex defects, performance challenges and production incidents.
• Champion automated testing, secure coding, code quality and effective technical documentation.
• Manage technical debt deliberately and transparently.

Own delivery and operational excellence

• Lead the team through the full software development and product lifecycle.
• Establish modern engineering practices across CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, observability and release management.
• Ensure that the team builds for operability, reliability, security and supportability from the outset.
• Define and track appropriate engineering and service-health measures.
• Lead incident response, root-cause analysis and blameless post-incident reviews.
• Use operational insights, customer feedback and engineering data to improve the product continuously.

Partner across the business

• Work closely with Product Management to shape priorities, delivery plans and product outcomes.
• Collaborate with Architecture, Cybersecurity, Data, Risk, Compliance, Design, Business and Operations.
• Communicate technical decisions, risks, dependencies and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Manage cross-team dependencies and remove impediments to delivery.
• Help create shared accountability for customer outcomes rather than narrow functional hand-offs.

What you will bring

• A relevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 8 to 10+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful experience in a technical leadership, senior engineering or solution architecture role.
• A strong record of designing, building and operating secure, scalable and highly available software systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead engineers while retaining strong hands-on technical credibility.
• Strong understanding of system design, software architecture and modern engineering practices.
• Experience building distributed systems in a cloud environment, preferably AWS, although relevant Azure or Google Cloud experience will also be considered.
• Experience with modern backend technologies such as Java, Python, Node.js, Go or comparable languages.
• Experience with modern frontend frameworks such as React, Angular or Vue.
• Practical experience with APIs, microservices, event-driven architecture and integration patterns.
• Experience with relational and non-relational databases, messaging platforms and data-intensive systems.
• Working knowledge of containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure as code and observability.
• Strong problem-solving, communication and stakeholder-management capability.
• Experience in insurance, fintech, banking, investments, retirement income or another regulated environment will be advantageous.

What will make you successful?

Ownership

• You take accountability for the technology and the outcomes it enables. You do not see production support, defects or operational performance as someone else’s responsibility.

Technical judgement

• You can navigate complexity, identify the decisions that matter and choose solutions that are appropriate for the product, organisation and customer.

Engineering leadership

• You raise the standard of engineering around you. You coach through the work, provide clarity and help capable engineers become even better.

Product thinking

• You understand that technology exists to solve customer and business problems. You consider value, risk, sustainability and total cost of ownership when making technical decisions.

Delivery focus

• You create momentum without compromising security, resilience or maintainability. You favour incremental delivery, fast feedback and continuous improvement.

Communication and influence

• You can explain complex technical matters in accessible language, facilitate productive technical discussions and influence decisions across organisational boundaries.

Learning mindset

• You remain curious, keep pace with developments in engineering and apply new technologies thoughtfully rather than following trends for their own sake.
• These success attributes build on the source advert’s emphasis on ownership, customer centricity, growth, innovation, velocity and inclusion.

Why join SLS Technology?

This is an opportunity to:

• Build a strategically important financial services product from the ground up.
• Shape the technical foundation rather than inherit all the decisions.
• Help select and develop the engineering team that will build and operate the product.
• Work with meaningful autonomy and end-to-end accountability.
• Solve complex technology problems in a large, regulated financial services environment.
• Build technology that supports customers at an important stage of their financial lives.
• Contribute to the evolution of modern product and engineering practices across SLS Technology.
• Grow your career within one of Africa’s largest diversified financial services groups.

The opportunity

• We are looking for more than someone who can coordinate delivery. We need a technology leader who can design it, build it, lead it and own it.
• If you are excited by the opportunity to create a strong engineering team, build enduring technology and take responsibility for the product throughout its lifecycle, we would like to hear from you.

Closing date 30 November 2026.