Senior Software Engineer (Java / Spring) - Cape Town

Location: Cape Town
Working arrangement: Hybrid – two office days per week

We are recruiting an accomplished Senior Software Engineer with strong Java and Spring expertise to take ownership of complex backend development.

This opportunity suits a hands-on engineer who builds scalable, reliable systems, makes sound technical decisions and raises engineering standards through collaboration, code reviews and mentorship.

• Design, build and maintain scalable backend services using Java and the Spring ecosystem.

• Own complex features from technical design through development, testing and deployment.

• Translate business requirements into practical, maintainable technical solutions.

• Review code and champion secure coding, effective testing and strong software design.

• Mentor fellow engineers and contribute to technical knowledge sharing.

• Design and maintain relational database schemas, write efficient SQL and manage data migrations.

• Investigate performance issues and improve application reliability and efficiency.

• Collaborate with product and other technical teams to deliver high-quality software.

• Contribute to sprint planning, daily stand-ups and retrospectives.

• Use Git-based workflows, pull requests and branching strategies to support collaborative development.

• Support application deployment and monitoring across cloud or on-premises environments.

• Identify opportunities to improve development processes, tooling and code quality.

• Strong professional experience developing enterprise applications in Java.

• Extensive hands-on experience with Spring Boot and the broader Spring ecosystem, including Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security and AMQP.

• Strong understanding of object-oriented programming and scalable backend design.

• Demonstrated ownership of complex software features or systems through the full development lifecycle.

• Solid relational database knowledge, including normalisation, schema design and SQL optimisation.

• Experience conducting code reviews and guiding other developers.

• Proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows.

• Experience with IntelliJ IDEA or comparable Java development tools.

• Familiarity with Agile delivery and task management tools such as JIRA.

• Practical familiarity with AI-assisted development tools and the ability to evaluate their output critically.

• Strong problem-solving skills, attention to quality and effective communication.

• Ability to attend the Cape Town office twice weekly.

Advantageous Experience

• Messaging technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.

• MySQL and MongoDB.

• Cloud platforms, particularly Google Cloud Platform.

• Docker and CI/CD pipelines.

• Vue.js or Angular.

• Database migrations, backups and performance tuning.

• API and end-to-end testing tools such as Postman or Cypress.

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