{"id":3628319,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-software-engineer-machine-learning","title":"Software Engineer (Machine Learning)","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":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","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":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon S3","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"Feature Store","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Scikit-learn","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-28T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-28","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T15:35:58Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":7,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":7},"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\nSFTx 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.\nA 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.\nReporting 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.\nWhat will you do?\nFeature Ownership & Delivery\nTake full ownership of new features and ML/data products, delivering them from concept to production independently.\nWork independently to create solutions without constant direction or supervision.\nDesign and implement moderately complex systems, including ML pipelines and data workflows, with understanding of trade-offs.\nSolve problems in any part of the codebase, including data and ML components, demonstrating breadth of technical capability.\nBalance feature delivery with long-term code quality and technical considerations.\nProactively identify and address small pieces of technical debt within work scope.\nCode Quality & Technical Excellence\nFocus on operational and code excellence during code reviews and feature development.\nContribute to coding standards and ensure code efficiency and reusability.\nWrite robust, well-tested code that meets team quality standards.\nParticipate actively in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to peers.\nApply understanding of design principles and software engineering best practices.\nWork with multiple frameworks and explore libraries as needed for solutions, including ML frameworks such as scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.\nML Engineering\nApply understanding of the ML model lifecycle: training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.\nDesign and maintain data pipeline orchestration and workflow management.\nApply data versioning, feature stores, and ML metadata management practices.\nBuild and maintain model serving patterns and APIs for ML systems.\nArticulate the pros and cons of relevant data structures and algorithms for time and space complexity, including trade-offs as scope evolves.\nOperational Excellence\nParticipate actively in on-call rotations and handle incidents effectively.\nImplement robust monitoring, logging, and alerting for owned features, services, and ML systems.\nRespond to production issues promptly and escalate appropriately when necessary.\nContribute to incident postmortems and help prevent recurrence of issues.\nUnderstand operational practices - scalability, robustness, fault tolerance, load balancing, and health checking - and apply them to ensure system and model reliability.\nCross-functional Collaboration\nWork effectively with Product Management and Design teams to understand business context and requirements and shape solutions.\nEffectively collaborate with engineering team members to bring out the best in others.\nCommunicate complex technical ideas clearly and facilitate team discussions.\nParticipate in technical discussions and contribute to team decision-making.\nTeam Improvement & Mentorship\nProactively improve the team's development, testing, and operational practices.\nBegin mentoring junior engineers and provide constructive feedback.\nTake ownership of tasks and demonstrate leadership in feature delivery.\nDemonstrate growing influence beyond individual tasks to impact the broader team.\nStart scaling through others by guiding team members and delivering through them.\nQualification and Experience\nRelevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).\nTypically 5+ years of software engineering experience.\nProficient in multiple programming languages with understanding of language-specific best practices.\nComfortable with complex algorithms and optimised data structures.\nExperience with distributed systems, APIs, databases, and scalable architecture.\nUnderstanding of cloud-based infrastructure and operational practices (monitoring, metrics, fault tolerance).\nExposure to ML frameworks (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar).\nKnowledge of cloud services such as AWS VPC, Auto Scaling, serverless computing, storage (EBS, S3), containers, and DNS is preferred, though not a prerequisite.\nWhat will make you successful in this role?\nIndependent 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.\nProblem-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.\nCollaboration & 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.\nBusiness 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.\nMentorship Capability: Beginning to develop coaching skills through mentoring junior engineers. Provides constructive feedback during code reviews and helps others grow their capabilities.\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.\nGrowth Mindset - 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. Through 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":10167,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"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":0.62,"p_room":0.368,"age_days":7,"expected_fill_days":3,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-software-engineer-machine-learning","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sanlam-software-engineer-machine-learning.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T21:12:30Z","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":32818,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"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-software-engineer-machine-learning"},{"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-software-engineer-machine-learning"},{"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-software-engineer-machine-learning"},{"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-software-engineer-machine-learning\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsanlam-software-engineer-machine-learning"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3628319}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"sanlam.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3628319},"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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