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Position Overview

• Sanlam Fintech x is a small business unit within the Sanlam Group office and it's looking to fill the role of Senior Product Designer, reporting into a Head of Design. As part of the central Digital Product & Design function within SFTx, the role will be responsible for designing key parts of the product experience of SFTx's digital products and channels.
• The role will support relevant stakeholders, leveraging innovative design outcomes to give customers confidence during any digital engagements and experiences of their financial services. 

What will you do?

As a Senior Product Designer, you will be expected to:

Craft & Execute 

• Use and apply current and relevant design methodologies, tools, frameworks, and practices to solve for, and design experiences that enable and support Sanlam's customers.
• Define interactions and services based on relevant business, technical, and design considerations. 
• Conduct user research and usability testing to ensure validated design solutions, capturing insights and testing data, packaged for distribution and feedback sessions. 
• Own the UX and Interaction Design deliverables as agreed upon during performance contracting. 

Project & Team 

• Make design ideas tangible for the project team and stakeholders through visual storytelling, UX and interaction design techniques. 
• Present, explain and discuss design decisions eloquently, and give design feedback.
• Execute product design tasks and maintain a high quality of deliverables. 
• Collaborate with UX Architects, Service Designers, BA's, Product Managers and other stakeholders to understand objectives and key business outcomes, user needs and behaviours to inform the design solutioning.
• Collaborate with Front End Developers, Product teams, the Design System team, and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that final product code delivery is representative of the most feasible and preferred design solution 

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor of Design (Product Design) with experience / exposure to Interactive and UX Design.
• At least 8 years of experience in the discipline of Product Design across varied customer personas, business problems and devices, including mobile. 

What will make you successful in this role?

• Experience with UX design for mobile is required.
• Experience working in cross-functional product teams as a senior product designer, UX designer or comparable role.
• Experience with multimedia.
• Experience designing for financial products and markets. 

Required Behavioural Competencies

SFTx's 6 Leadership Principles:

• Ownership Mindset – Looking for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. Being accountable for actions and decisions, owning both successes and mistakes, and learning and growing from each experience.
• Growth Mindset – Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth.
• Customer Centricity – A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback and their behaviours.
• Innovation (Jugaad) – Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change.
• Velocity – Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results.
• Inclusion – Seeking out and valuing different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes, making tomorrow not just different, but better.

Overview of Role Responsibilities

Digital Channels and Technology Management

• Support digital channel management through use of front-end interactive technologies, encompassing usability, design, user interface, and device strategy. Facilitate an understanding of engagement metrics and provide regular performance analysis.

Design and Conceptualization

• Produce multiple concepts and prototypes to design digital products/services.

Customer Experiences Implementation

• Design and coordinate implementation of differentiating customer experience initiatives, tools, and processes.

Customer Needs/Experience Research

• Complete research and analyze data to develop and/or support a sound understanding of customer segments, trends, needs, and expectations.

Customer Experience Mapping

• Lead implementation and performance of techniques, such as voice of the customer initiatives, journey mapping, and qualitative touchpoint analysis, to identify customer pain points, challenges, and hurdles; advise on approaches to eliminate negative experiences and enhance customer interactions.

Required Skills

User Experience Design Techniques - Advanced

• Works at an advanced level to direct user behavior by providing accessibility and desirability in the interaction with a product. Typically works independently and provides guidance.

Creative Design - Fully Competent

• Works with full competence to produce design concepts and visualize them, oversee design changes and improvements, integrate technical and visual solutions into a concept and assist with prototype development. Typically works without supervision and may provide technical guidance.

Graphical User Interface Development - Fully Competent

• Works with full competence to use systems and software to design and build user interfaces for computer applications. Typically works without supervision and may provide technical guidance.

Media Management and Utilization - Fully Competent

• Works with full competence to assess and utilize media channels and opportunities in order to gain maximum benefit for the brand, product or service. Typically works without supervision and may provide technical guidance.

Document and Model User Requirements - Advanced

• Works at an advanced level to utilize the appropriate modeling tool(s) to diagram the requirements from data and state changes, process and process improvements, as well as use cases and user stories. Typically works independently and provides guidance.

Data Collection and Analysis - Advanced

• Works at an advanced level to determine and analyze trends from data that is collected to assist in compiling reports that will help in decision-making. Typically works independently and provides guidance.

General Experience

• Experience enables job holder to deal with the majority of situations and to advise others (Minimum 8 years)

Managerial Experience

• Managerial experience not required but should be able to lead cross functional projects with teams.

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Position Overview

• Sanlam Fintech x is a small business unit within the Sanlam Group office and it's looking to fill the role of a SSE. A Senior Software Engineer is a technical leader who demonstrates excellence in designing complex solutions whilst influencing the entire team through mentorship and technical guidance.
• This role requires the ability to lead significant development efforts, drive best practices, and translate business needs into scalable technical solutions. SSE's work closely with stakeholders to shape product direction whilst proactively managing technical debt and elevating team capabilities. 
• Reporting to a Tech Lead, this role requires deep technical expertise, strong leadership abilities, and the capacity to align technical decisions with business objectives.
• You will work closely with Product Management and Design teams to understand business needs and shape solutions, collaborate with architects and technical leadership on architectural decisions, and drive operational excellence through robust system design and team mentorship.

What will you do?

Technical Leadership & Solution Design

• Design and implement high-quality, scalable solutions for complex technical challenges.
• Lead development efforts for significant features or components within the team.
• Design robust, scalable components and services with consideration for failure modes.
• Make significant contributions to architecture discussions and technical decision-making within the team.
• Review and guide the team's system designs, ensuring alignment with broader architecture.
• Drive best practices in coding standards, testing methodologies, and operational excellence.
• Establish team-level code quality practices and drive regular refactoring initiatives.
• Consider ROI and business impact when making technical decisions.

Stakeholder Collaboration & Business Alignment

• Work closely with stakeholders to understand business needs and translate them into technical solutions.
• Collaborate effectively with Product Management and Design to shape solutions and improve product functionality.
• Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders within the team.
• Align technical solutions with business objectives and consider business implications of technical investments.
• Understand business context deeply and how technical decisions impact business outcomes. 

Technical Debt & System Reliability

• Proactively identify and address technical debt within area of responsibility.
• Develop strategies for managing team technical debt in systematic, sustainable ways.
• Design systems with reliability in mind, including comprehensive monitoring and alerting strategies.
• Take ownership of production incidents related to their area, ensuring proper resolution and follow-up.
• Lead incident investigations and conduct thorough postmortems to prevent recurrence.
• Apply systematic approaches to debugging and resolve complex technical issues. 

Mentorship & Team Development

• Provide technical mentorship to team members and actively help grow their capabilities.
• Influence the entire team through technical leadership, coaching, and guidance. 
• Facilitate team decisions and help resolve technical disagreements constructively.
• Mentor team members on both technical skills and soft skills development. 
• Provide regular constructive feedback through code reviews and one-on-one interactions.
• Help less experienced engineers develop problem-solving approaches and technical judgement. 

Operational Excellence

• Drive operational excellence through robust system design and engineering practices.
• Design systems with comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities.
• Lead the team's approach to incident response and drive improvements in operational processes.
• Ensure the team maintains high standards for code quality, testing, and system reliability.
• Champion automation and reduction of operational toil within the team. 

Qualification and Experience

• Relevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Typically 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong knowledge of multiple programming languages, best practices and performance characteristics. 
• Experienced with several frameworks and capable of contributing improvements and custom extensions.
• Extensive experience designing, developing, and testing distributed, high-volume and highly reliable software.
• Experience with cloud-based infrastructure and operational practices. 

What will make you successful in this role?

• Solution Design Capability: Proven ability to design robust, scalable solutions for complex problems whilst considering trade-offs, failure modes, and long-term maintainability. Makes sound architectural decisions for team-owned components.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence the team through technical excellence, mentorship, and guidance. Drives best practices and elevates team capabilities through coaching and example.
• Business Acumen: Deep understanding of how technical solutions support business objectives. Considers ROI of technical investments and aligns technical work with business goals. Understands product strategy and market context. 
• Communication Excellence: Strong communication skills to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders, facilitate team discussions, and influence decision-making. Creates clear technical documentation.
• Problem-solving Excellence: Applies systematic approaches to debugging and resolving complex issues. Identifies root causes and develops comprehensive solutions that address underlying problems, not just symptoms. 

Required Behavioural Competencies

SFTx's 6 Leadership Principles:

• Ownership Mindset – Looking for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. Being accountable for actions and decisions, owning both successes and mistakes, and learning and growing from each experience.
• Growth Mindset – Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth.
• Customer Centricity – A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback and their behaviours.
• Innovation (Jugaad) – Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change.
• Velocity – Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results.
• Inclusion – Seeking out and valuing different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes, making tomorrow not just different, but better.

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Position Overview

• SFTx is a newly established digital first business unit within the Sanlam Group on a mission to democratize financial advice and solutions for everyone across the African continent.
• We exist to pioneer inclusive financial confidence helping people build strong foundations to bridge the gap in generational wealth. Our culture is that of agility and constant deployment, we believe in learning fast, learning cheap and learning forward. Our aim is to provide a work environment where knowledge workers can accelerate the development of their ideas and bring innovation to market, at the same time provide compelling career and development proposition that will enable them to realize their dreams.
• A Software Engineer (ML) is an independent contributor who takes ownership of ML-driven and data-intensive features from concept to production, whilst mentoring junior engineers and actively improving team practices.
• This role requires the ability to work autonomously, solve problems across the codebase and data/ML stack, and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams. SEs in this track deliver complete features and models independently whilst demonstrating growing influence beyond individual tasks to impact the broader team.
• Reporting to a Tech Lead, this role requires solid technical expertise, proven ability to deliver end-to-end solutions across data and ML systems, and emerging leadership skills in mentoring and process improvement.
• You will work closely with Product Management and Design teams to understand business context, collaborate with engineering peers to deliver high-quality solutions, and actively participate in improving development, testing, and operational practices across the team.

What will you do?

Feature Ownership & Delivery

• Take full ownership of new features and ML/data products, delivering them from concept to production independently.
• Work independently to create solutions without constant direction or supervision.
• Design and implement moderately complex systems, including ML pipelines and data workflows, with understanding of trade-offs.
• Solve problems in any part of the codebase, including data and ML components, demonstrating breadth of technical capability.
• Balance feature delivery with long-term code quality and technical considerations.
• Proactively identify and address small pieces of technical debt within work scope.

Code Quality & Technical Excellence

• Focus on operational and code excellence during code reviews and feature development.
• Contribute to coding standards and ensure code efficiency and reusability.
• Write robust, well-tested code that meets team quality standards.
• Participate actively in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to peers.
• Apply understanding of design principles and software engineering best practices.
• Work with multiple frameworks and explore libraries as needed for solutions, including ML frameworks such as scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.

ML Engineering

• Apply understanding of the ML model lifecycle: training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Design and maintain data pipeline orchestration and workflow management.
• Apply data versioning, feature stores, and ML metadata management practices.
• Build and maintain model serving patterns and APIs for ML systems.
• Articulate the pros and cons of relevant data structures and algorithms for time and space complexity, including trade-offs as scope evolves.

Operational Excellence

• Participate actively in on-call rotations and handle incidents effectively.
• Implement robust monitoring, logging, and alerting for owned features, services, and ML systems.
• Respond to production issues promptly and escalate appropriately when necessary.
• Contribute to incident postmortems and help prevent recurrence of issues.
• Understand operational practices — scalability, robustness, fault tolerance, load balancing, and health checking — and apply them to ensure system and model reliability.

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Work effectively with Product Management and Design teams to understand business context and requirements and shape solutions.
• Effectively collaborate with engineering team members to bring out the best in others.
• Communicate complex technical ideas clearly and facilitate team discussions.
• Participate in technical discussions and contribute to team decision-making.

Team Improvement & Mentorship

• Proactively improve the team's development, testing, and operational practices.
• Begin mentoring junior engineers and provide constructive feedback.
• Take ownership of tasks and demonstrate leadership in feature delivery.
• Demonstrate growing influence beyond individual tasks to impact the broader team.
• Start scaling through others by guiding team members and delivering through them.

Qualification and Experience

• Relevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Typically 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proficient in multiple programming languages with understanding of language-specific best practices.
• Comfortable with complex algorithms and optimised data structures.
• Experience with distributed systems, APIs, databases, and scalable architecture.
• Understanding of cloud-based infrastructure and operational practices (monitoring, metrics, fault tolerance).
• Exposure to ML frameworks (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar).
• Knowledge of cloud services such as AWS VPC, Auto Scaling, serverless computing, storage (EBS, S3), containers, and DNS is preferred, though not a prerequisite.

What will make you successful in this role?

• Independent Contribution: Proven ability to work independently on moderately complex problems, make sound technical decisions, and deliver complete features and ML/data solutions without constant supervision.
• Problem-solving Skills: Efficient at debugging and troubleshooting moderately complex issues across code and data/ML systems. Can analyse problems systematically and develop effective solutions with minimal guidance.
• Collaboration & Communication: Strong communication skills to facilitate team discussions, work effectively across functions, and explain technical concepts clearly. Builds positive working relationships with Product, Design, and Engineering colleagues.
• Business Awareness: Understanding of business context and how technical and ML work supports product goals. Aware of business model and contributes to product decisions with technical perspective.
• Mentorship Capability: Beginning to develop coaching skills through mentoring junior engineers. Provides constructive feedback during code reviews and helps others grow their capabilities.

Required Behavioural Competencies

SFTx's 6 Leadership Principles:

• Ownership Mindset – Looking for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. Being accountable for actions and decisions, owning both successes and mistakes, and learning and growing from each experience.
• Growth Mindset – Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth.
• Customer Centricity – A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback and their behaviours.
• Innovation (Jugaad) – Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change.
• Velocity – Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results.
• Inclusion – Seeking out and valuing different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes, making tomorrow not just different, but better.

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Positions Overview

• Sanlam Fintech x is a small business unit within the Sanlam Group office and it's looking to fill the role of a Technical lead. A TL is responsible for larger components, sets of features or whole applications.
• They typically have 8-10 years or more of software engineering experience and at least 3 years’ experience managing/coaching a team. They work closely with Design and Product Management but may also work broadly across an organisation on critical contributions.
• They help others with planning and reviews and propose solutions to complex problems. They have technical writing skills and help drive the overall vision and system design. 

What will you do?

Reporting to the CTO, this role drives technical leadership, mentorship and innovation within a fintech agile team.

Key responsibilities include:

• Technical Direction: Align team deliverables with strategic technical decisions, ensuring scalable, high-quality solutions
• Leadership & Mentorship: Foster team growth through coaching, cultivating top-tier engineering talent
• Code Excellence: Deliver robust, maintainable code in a collaborative, cross-functional environment
• Modern Tech Stack: Leverage pragmatic, cutting-edge technologies to build scalable distributed systems

Ideal for fintech innovators passionate about disrupting finance, this role combines hands-on development with stakeholder management, guiding projects from inception to delivery while optimizing team productivity and communication. Join us in shaping the future of finance through technology 

Qualification and Experience

• A relevant bachelor's degree or diploma
• 8+ years of software development experience, with 3+ years in a technical leadership role (e.g., Tech Lead, Senior Engineer, or Architect)
• Proven track record of designing, building, and scaling distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP)
• Strong expertise in modern backend technologies (e.g., Java, Python, Node.js, Go) and frontend frameworks (React, Angular, or Vue)
• Experience with microservices, event-driven architectures, and API design (REST/gRPC/GraphQL)
• Hands-on with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Familiarity with DevOps practices (CI/CD, IaC, Kubernetes, Docker) and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)
• Leadership & Mentorship: Ability to guide, inspire and grow engineering teams
• Fintech/banking experience (payments, lending, wealth management) is a plus
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills 

What will make you successful in this role?

• This role requires extensive hands-on experience designing, developing, and testing distributed, high-volume, and highly reliable software. You will need a solid understanding of requirements and excellent communication skills for explaining technical solutions.
• Business and operational awareness, as well as experience with cloud-based infrastructure, ideally AWS, are also required.

 At Sanlam Fintech, we demand a lot from each other, but we also give a lot in return. You'll love: 

• Engaging with intelligent, driven people in a stimulating virtual environment
• Making a real social impact through your work
• Continuous growth and learning, with abundant support and encouragemen
• Courageously navigating through uncharted territory
• Tackling exciting challenges with international teams
• Enjoying flexible work practices that enable you to deliver your best
• Having the autonomy and empowerment to lead
• Being at the cutting edge of technology and innovation

Required Behavioural Competencies

SFTx's 6 Leadership Principles:

• Ownership Mindset – Looking for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. Being accountable for actions and decisions, owning both successes and mistakes, and learning and growing from each experience.
• Growth Mindset – Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth.
• Customer Centricity – A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback and their behaviours.
• Innovation (Jugaad) – Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change.
• Velocity – Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results.
• Inclusion – Seeking out and valuing different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes, making tomorrow not just different, but better.