Lead Software Engineer

Department: Operations

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Cape Town

Reporting To: Megan Robertson

Description

Key Responsibilities

• Provide day-to-day technical leadership for the Software Engineering team in South Africa, setting clear direction while remaining close to delivery.
• Write, review and maintain high-quality production code across frontend, backend and integration layers.
• Lead the technical delivery of complex AI-enabled, voice and contact centre solutions from design through deployment and operational support.
• Apply consistent technical direction across multiple projects, ensuring engineering decisions support scope, quality, security, performance and delivery commitments.
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex technical issues across application code, integrations, cloud services, infrastructure and production environments.
• Remove technical blockers by making timely decisions, coordinating the right expertise and escalating delivery risks early.
• Break down work, assess technical complexity and provide realistic estimates, assumptions and dependencies for project planning.
• Mentor engineers through pairing, coaching, design reviews and constructive code review, helping the team grow without reducing individual accountability.
• Work with delivery leads, architects and customer stakeholders to shape practical technical approaches and communicate progress, risks and trade-offs clearly.
• Promote engineering discipline through automated testing, CI/CD, observability, security controls, documentation and reusable patterns.
• Contribute to the AI Practice leadership team, representing engineering delivery in discussions on standards, resourcing, capability, technical risk and continuous improvement.
• Support production services where required, including structured troubleshooting, root-cause analysis and reliability improvements.

Skills Knowledge and Expertise

• More than five years of commercial software engineering experience, with clear evidence of operating as a seasoned developer who still writes and reviews code.
• Experience leading or providing technical direction to software engineering teams in a delivery environment.
• Strong full-stack engineering capability, covering backend services, APIs, integrations, data persistence and modern web applications.
• Hands-on proficiency in at least one core backend language such as Python, C#/.NET or Java/Spring, plus JavaScript or TypeScript using a modern framework such as React, Angular or Vue.js.
• Experience designing, building and supporting secure, scalable and observable production systems.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs, asynchronous processing, real-time integration patterns and event-driven architectures.
• Practical experience with automated testing, peer review, source control, CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform, including containerised workloads using Docker and, ideally, Kubernetes.
• Ability to diagnose complex issues across the full solution stack and make sound technical decisions under delivery pressure.
• Ability to estimate engineering work, explain assumptions and identify technical dependencies and risks.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including confidence working directly with customers and senior delivery stakeholders.
• A supportive leadership style with proven experience mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards.

• Experience delivering AI-enabled software projects in a commercial environment.
• Practical understanding of generative AI application patterns, including model integration, orchestration, prompt management, evaluation, guardrails, monitoring and responsible use.
• Experience integrating AI services such as Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Services, Amazon Bedrock or equivalent services.
• Experience of voice automation, conversational AI, IVR, speech services or real-time audio applications is strongly preferred.
• Experience working in a contact centre environment, including integration with telephony, customer service platforms or enterprise systems, is strongly preferred.
• Understanding of the operational requirements of customer-facing AI systems, including latency, resilience, observability, security, data privacy and human escalation.

• Python asynchronous frameworks such as FastAPI, Uvicorn, Asyncio, Pydantic and SQLAlchemy.
• C# with .NET 8+, Java with Spring, or equivalent enterprise application frameworks.
• Azure services such as App Service, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Speech, Key Vault, Azure SQL, Storage Accounts, Application Insights and Azure Cache for Redis.
• AWS services, particularly Amazon Connect, Lambda, Bedrock or related contact centre services.
• Terraform, Ansible, Bash, PowerShell and Azure DevOps or equivalent CI/CD tooling.
• Relational databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL, plus caching technologies such as Redis.
• WebSocket-based communication, microservices and high-volume real-time transactional systems.

• Customer projects have clear technical ownership, realistic estimates and early visibility of risk.
• Complex technical issues are resolved quickly, with blockers removed before they affect delivery commitments.
• Engineering standards are applied consistently across projects without creating unnecessary process or overhead.
• The South Africa engineering team grows in capability, confidence and accountability through practical mentoring and clear direction.
• The role remains hands-on, with visible contribution to code, design quality and production reliability.
• AI Practice leadership receives clear, evidence-based input on engineering capacity, delivery risk and technical priorities.

• Lead the technical delivery of AI, voice and contact centre solutions for major customer environments.
• Combine hands-on engineering with meaningful leadership responsibility across a growing team and project portfolio.
• Help shape practical engineering standards and capability within Sabio's AI Practice.
• Work in an inclusive environment that values strong delivery, honest communication and continuous learning.

Benefits

• Remote/Flexible work
• Discovery Medical Aid  
• Connectivity Allowance
• 15 days paid holiday a year (this excludes three Sabio days)
• Momentum EAP