Openings at Allan Gray Proprietary Limited

You will liaise with Senior IT Members and make sure that the technical vision of the company is translated and preserved.

As an experienced developer you will ensure the design of clear and simple solutions and that elegant robust code is written as well as provide guidance in troubleshooting and root cause analysis.

You will be responsible for several home-grown systems that are predominantly written in C# and T-SQL.

Responsibilities

• Liaise with senior IT members in Cape Town and build software and processes accordingly
• Design clean and simple solutions
• Ensure that elegant robust code is written
• Improve and optimize the performance of existing systems
• Provide guidance in troubleshooting root-cause errors
• Ensure that unit, integration and acceptance tests for all components are written
• Ensure that build automation scripts are written
• Assist with analysis where required

Requirements

• At least 5 years’ worth of professional development experience
• Strong software design skills
• Strong understanding of software development process.
• Proficiency in programming languages (T-SQL, C#)
• Experience in system integration, distributed computing and building enterprise-wide systems
• 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
• Needs to be a critical thinker with good troubleshooting capabilities, including knowing when to log for future investigations.
• Needs to have good clear communication skills

Bonus Experience

• Development using Scala
• Development for reports in FO / Crystal / SSRS
• Development of monitoring and alerting in Grafana / Redgate / Dynatrace

Education

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Science or related discipline

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Job Description

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. 

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 currently excited about migrating our Apps to AWS Cloud - this would be an opportunity to join in the learning curve.

We are looking for a Developer with to join a team responsible for developing new solutions and supporting the existing systems in a challenging business environment. We strive to build sustainable solutions where developers ideally write code they never have to touch again; our ideal candidate is detail oriented and possesses strong written and verbal communication skills. 

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.
 
We like writing code that we never have to touch again. We have a lot to conquer and prefer keeping it fresh !

Responsibilities

• Interact with business users, Business Analysts and other Developers to understand new requirements.
• Write technical specifications and develop new functionality to Allan Gray standards and deadlines.
• Participate in design and planning sessions.
• Understand how our existing systems work, how they fit into the overall architecture and what they achieve for the business.
• Analyse issues reported by users and track down their cause through debugging techniques and discussion with other team members.
• Testing and deployment of code changes.

Requirements

• 5+ years’ experience in systems design and coding in Microsoft .NET, .NET Core, C#, C++, Java or JavaScript.
• Experience in mentoring Junior Developers
• Proficiency in a database technology such as SQL Server or PostgreSQL.
• Knowledge of software engineering practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes and testing.
• Experience in interacting with business users to understand requirements and managing the implementation of system changes.

Bonus Experience

Experience with any of the following would be advantageous:

• Microservices.
• Docker and Kubernetes.
• Message queueing technologies (e.g. RabbitMQ).
• Event driven architecture.
• Cloud (preferably AWS).

Key Attributes

• A positive, can-do attitude, willing to learn and persevere.
• Attention to detail and quality.
• Willingness to take initiative and responsibility.
• Ability to meet deadlines and deal with pressure.
• Ability to work effectively as part of a diverse team and cross-train with team members.
• Strong analytical & mathematical skills.
• Good communication.

Education

• Degree or diploma in an analytical, quantitative field such as computer science, engineering, business science or similar.
• Strong academic performance