{"id":3628320,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-senior-software-engineer-2","title":"Senior Software Engineer","company":{"id":2194082,"name":"Sanlam","domain":"sanlam.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sanlam-co-za","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"SuccessFactors","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cape Town, South Africa"],"countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-28T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-28","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T12:49:22Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":9,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":9},"description":"Who are we?\nSanlam was established as a life insurance company in South Africa but has since transformed into a diversified financial services group that operates across the African continent, India, Malaysia and selected developed markets, with listings on the Johannesburg, A2X and Namibian Securities Stock exchanges. In 2018 the Group celebrated its centenary as well as 20 years since demutualisation and listing in South Africa and Namibia. Sanlam is one of the largest internationally active insurance groups in the world with a presence in 27 countries and has the biggest non-banking financial services footprint on the African continent.\nThe Group's four business clusters (Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz and Santam) house the Group's business operations. The Group Office provides strategic direction and support to the four clusters, assisting them in realising their strategies and meeting their business objectives. The Group Office is responsible for governance and for the Group's centralised functions, which include: Group Tecnhnology, Finance, Actuarial, Risk and Balance Sheet Management, Strategy, Human Capital, Brand, Marketing and Corporate Affairs. The Group Office ensures cohesive management across the organisation.\nPosition Overview\nSanlam 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.\nReporting 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.\nWhat will you do?\nTechnical Leadership & Solution Design\nDesign and implement high-quality, scalable solutions for complex technical challenges.\nLead development efforts for significant features or components within the team.\nDesign robust, scalable components and services with consideration for failure modes.\nMake significant contributions to architecture discussions and technical decision-making within the team.\nReview and guide the team's system designs, ensuring alignment with broader architecture.\nDrive best practices in coding standards, testing methodologies, and operational excellence.\nEstablish team-level code quality practices and drive regular refactoring initiatives.\nConsider ROI and business impact when making technical decisions.\nStakeholder Collaboration & Business Alignment\nWork closely with stakeholders to understand business needs and translate them into technical solutions.\nCollaborate effectively with Product Management and Design to shape solutions and improve product functionality.\nCommunicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders within the team.\nAlign technical solutions with business objectives and consider business implications of technical investments.\nUnderstand business context deeply and how technical decisions impact business outcomes. \nTechnical Debt & System Reliability\nProactively identify and address technical debt within area of responsibility.\nDevelop strategies for managing team technical debt in systematic, sustainable ways.\nDesign systems with reliability in mind, including comprehensive monitoring and alerting strategies.\nTake ownership of production incidents related to their area, ensuring proper resolution and follow-up.\nLead incident investigations and conduct thorough postmortems to prevent recurrence.\nApply systematic approaches to debugging and resolve complex technical issues. \nMentorship & Team Development\nProvide technical mentorship to team members and actively help grow their capabilities.\nInfluence the entire team through technical leadership, coaching, and guidance. \nFacilitate team decisions and help resolve technical disagreements constructively.\nMentor team members on both technical skills and soft skills development. \nProvide regular constructive feedback through code reviews and one-on-one interactions.\nHelp less experienced engineers develop problem-solving approaches and technical judgement. \nOperational Excellence\nDrive operational excellence through robust system design and engineering practices.\nDesign systems with comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities.\nLead the team's approach to incident response and drive improvements in operational processes.\nEnsure the team maintains high standards for code quality, testing, and system reliability.\nChampion automation and reduction of operational toil within the team. \nQualification and Experience\nRelevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).\nTypically 8+ years of software engineering experience.\nStrong knowledge of multiple programming languages, best practices and performance characteristics. \nExperienced with several frameworks and capable of contributing improvements and custom extensions.\nExtensive experience designing, developing, and testing distributed, high-volume and highly reliable software.\nExperience with cloud-based infrastructure and operational practices. \nWhat will make you successful in this role?\nSolution 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.\nTechnical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence the team through technical excellence, mentorship, and guidance. Drives best practices and elevates team capabilities through coaching and example.\nBusiness 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. \nCommunication Excellence: Strong communication skills to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders, facilitate team discussions, and influence decision-making. Creates clear technical documentation.\nProblem-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. \nRequired Behavioural Competencies\nSFTx's 6 Leadership Principles:\nOwnership 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.\nGrowthMindset - Always learning and improving, getting better each time. Embracing challenges and failures as opportunities for growth.\nCustomer Centricity - A deep understanding of the customer seen in everything you do. Being led by customers, their feedback and their behaviours.\n Innovation (Jugaad) - Where some see impossible, seeing a way. Doing more with less, applying creativity to turn obstacles into opportunities, chance into change.\nVelocity - Moving fast and fixing things. Working iteratively to deliver customer value without sacrificing long-term value for short-term results.\nInclusion - 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.\nBuild a successful career with us\nWe’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future - your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth.\nThrough its five business clusters - Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office - the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.\nTurnaround time\nThe shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.\nOur commitment to transformation\nThe Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.","description_format":"text","description_chars":9168,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Property & Casualty Insurance","Asset Management & Funds","Life Insurance & Annuities"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-02T20:16:23Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":23,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.622,"p_room":0.368,"age_days":9,"expected_fill_days":3,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-senior-software-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-senior-software-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T17:08:28Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":31951,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":2194082},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2194082"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsanlam-senior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsanlam-senior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsanlam-senior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/sanlam-senior-software-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsanlam-senior-software-engineer-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3628320}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"sanlam.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3628320},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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