Senior Software Engineer

Who are we?

Sanlam Life and Savings (SLS) is one of Sanlam’s core business clusters, bringing together life insurance, retirement, savings and investment capabilities to help clients build and protect their financial futures.

SLS Technology is at the heart of this ambition. We are modernising our technology landscape, strengthening our engineering capability and building product-aligned teams that take end-to-end accountability for the technology they create, from design and build through to running, enhancing and continuously improving it.

Job Description

SLS Technology is looking for an exceptional Senior Software Engineer to join our Life Annuities Technology team. This is a senior, hands-on engineering role for someone who thrives on solving complex technical problems, designing scalable systems and setting a high engineering standard for others. Working closely with the Tech Lead, Product Management and Design, you will help shape technical solutions and turn business and customer needs into secure, reliable and maintainable technology.

Our philosophy is simple: Build it. Own it. You will take meaningful ownership across the full technology lifecycle, from solution design and software development through testing, deployment, production support, enhancement and continuous improvement. You will remain close to the code while also providing technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers, helping us build both an outstanding product and a high-performing engineering team.

What will you do?

Software Engineering & Solution Design

• Design, build, test and maintain high-quality, scalable software, writing clean, well-tested and maintainable production code.
• Lead the engineering of complex features, services and components.
• Translate complex requirements into pragmatic and maintainable technical solutions.
• Contribute meaningfully to architecture, system design and technology decisions, designing for scalability, security, resilience, performance and failure.
• Set and champion engineering standards across coding, testing, documentation and code reviews.
• Use modern AI-assisted and agentic engineering practices to accelerate software design, development, testing, debugging, documentation and continuous improvement.
• Design and build AI-enabled or agentic capabilities where appropriate, applying sound engineering principles around security, testing, observability, human oversight and reliability.

Own what we build

• Take end-to-end ownership of the technology you create, including its performance in production.
• Proactively identify and address technical debt.
• Build monitoring, logging, alerting and observability into solutions.
• Diagnose and resolve complex production issues.
• Lead root-cause analysis and contribute to blameless post-incident reviews.
• Continuously improve system reliability, performance and maintainability.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Be a trusted technical voice within the engineering team.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through pairing, code reviews and hands-on coaching.
• Help engineers strengthen their technical judgement and problem-solving capability.
• Facilitate technical discussions and constructively challenge engineering decisions.
• Share knowledge and contribute to a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.

Product & Business Collaboration

• Work closely with the Tech Lead, Product Management, Design, Architecture and business stakeholders.
• Understand the customer and business problem, not just the technical requirement.
• Balance delivery speed with sustainability, technical quality and long-term product health.
• Communicate technical decisions and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

What you will bring

• Relevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 8+ years of software engineering experience, with deep hands-on experience designing, developing and operating complex software systems.
• Strong proficiency across relevant modern programming languages and frameworks.
• Strong understanding of software design principles, engineering patterns, security and performance.
• Experience designing distributed, high-volume and highly reliable systems.
• Strong understanding of APIs, integration patterns and modern application architecture.
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases.
• Experience with cloud-based infrastructure and modern operational practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability and DevOps engineering.
• Practical experience with, or strong exposure to, AI-assisted software development and coding agents, and an understanding of how generative AI is changing modern software engineering.
• Proven ability to mentor and technically influence other engineers.

What will make you successful?

• Engineering Excellence: You care deeply about your craft and leave code and systems better than you found them.
• Technical Judgement: You understand trade-offs and know when to optimise for speed, simplicity, scale or resilience.
• Ownership: Production is part of engineering. If we build it, we own it.
• Problem Solving: You enjoy getting underneath complex problems and addressing root causes rather than symptoms.
• Product Thinking: You understand that excellent engineering ultimately needs to create customer and business value.
• Mentorship: You make other engineers better through coaching, collaboration and example.
• Continuous Learning: You remain curious and actively explore better engineering approaches, technologies and tools.

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.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken tocomplete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.

Closing date 30 November 2026.

The 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.