Technical Lead at Allan Gray Proprietary Limited

The Role

The Domains within Institutional IT are responsible for the design, implementation and support of the technology solutions that enable the Institutional business area and central Allan Gray business functions (Fund Operations, Performance, Trading, Investment Management and Client Servicing) to achieve their business objectives. The team strives to provide long-term solutions in a timely manner while ensuring stability, consistency and scalability. 

Our web applications follow a micro-services approach where the backend services are built primarily of REST API’s using .NET Core, running in containers in our Kubernetes cluster. Our front-ends are written as ReactJS single page applications. Our previous generation desktop applications are built using WPF and WinForms.

The Allan Gray Institutional development team is an environment where growth is encouraged and individuals who display initiative; willingness to learn and stretch themselves are given of opportunity to do so; the acquisition of new skills, both business and technical, is supported wholeheartedly.

We are looking for a Tech Lead who would be responsible to manage the technical aspects of the solution delivery and systems within the domain, manage the developers within the domain and to make a personal contribution to our technical solutions.

Responsibilities

Manage the technical aspects of the solution delivery and systems within the domain. 

• Understand the focus and direction of the business area; prioritising and driving delivery that helps to achieve this.
• Define the technical direction for the domain and ensure design of solutions and delivery.
• Involvement in the running of the domain, including sprint planning, design, drive delivery, retros, understanding root cause of issues/instability
• Responsible for the quality of technical solutions, maintenance of standards and managing impact/risk introduced by changes across domains. 
• Review code and approve changes before deployment to production.
• Assist with technical analysis, root cause analysis and designing preventative actions.
• Oversee the choice of application and approach to development for the delivery of new system/technical solutions by the developers. 
• Work with the Architect, other Tech Leads and Development Manager to understand and drive the strategic direction of the technologies within Institutional IT.
• Ensure domain technical direction is aligned with overall tech direction/architecture for Institutional IT, and overall tech direction caters for needs of the domains.
• Identify areas for continuous improvement of both systems and architectural standards and help drive implementation. 
• Timeous, clear tracking, management and appropriate escalation of issues and risks.
• Ensure systems documentation for support are produced as required.
• Ensure a stable and sustainable technical platform is in place to support the business area.

Manage the developers in the domain 

• Lead a team of developers (+/- 5 developers) in the domain, according to skill set.
• Carry out all aspects of people management i.e. staff performance appraisals, approve leave, recruit, train, develop and mentor staff.
• Responsible for assigning work to the developers, determining estimates, overseeing technical design and driving delivery according to our SDLC procedures and standards.
• Ensure the correct technical skills are in place in the domain to meet business needs.

To make a personal contribute to our technical solutions. Develop key solutions that add to our central technical stack or contribute to our initiatives.

Requirements

• Experience with managing a development team and driving team delivery.
• Knowledge of computer science fundamentals in object-oriented design, data structures and algorithms.
• Experience in interacting with business users to understand their requirements and managing the implementation of system changes.
• At least 8 years’ worth of professional development experience - able to perform at a senior developer level.
• Exceptional skills in systems design and coding in Microsoft .NET, C#, C++, Java or JavaScript.
• Experience in writing SQL for Microsoft SQL server, including stored procedures, UDF’s and other T-SQL Querying.
• Experience in system integration, distributed computing and building enterprise-wide systems.
• An understanding of relational database structures.
• Experience working in AWS Cloud implementation would be an advantage
• Exposure to PostreSQL would be an advantage

Key Attributes

• Knowledge of professional software engineering practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes and testing.
• Excellent leadership skills – able to direct, motivate, delegate, inspire.
• Good interpersonal skills, ability to work with diverse personality types and deal with conflict in an effective way.
• Ability to deal with key stakeholders within Allan Gray.
• Willingness to take initiative and responsibility.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong organisational and planning skills.
• Self-motivated and confident.
• Ability to work individually and with teams

Experience & Qualifications

• Degree or diploma in computer science, computer engineering, information science or related technical discipline.