Head of Software Engineering

Network Recruitment; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Network Recruitment in Gauteng, South Africa, seeks a Hands-on Head of Software Engineering to own the full SDLC with a strong DevOps focus. You’ll lead a ~12-person team across developers, QA, scrum master, and implementation specialist, while remaining technically hands-on in .NET/C# environments.

You will drive automation, establish best practices, and elevate engineering across legacy and modern platforms, shaping a mature DevOps culture and robust release management.

Qualifications

• 9+ years in software development with progression to leadership.
• Hands-on SDLC experience across legacy and modern codebases in .NET/C#.
• Strong DevOps background with CI/CD and release automation.
• Experience planning and leading cloud migration.

Responsibilities

• Own the full SDLC from planning to support.
• Provide clear reporting on delivery progress and system health.
• Design and enhance CI/CD pipelines for automation.
• Lead release management with low-risk deployments and change control.
• Champion a DevOps culture with automated, end-to-end quality.
• Establish unit testing as core practice.
• Define and implement a comprehensive test strategy.
• Lead QA resources and embed quality gates.

Skills

C#/.NET

DevOps

CI/CD pipelines

Technical leadership

Cloud migration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Cloud platforms (Azure/AWS)

Job description

Hands-on Head of Software Engineering with full SDLC ownership and a strong DevOps focus. Responsible for leading and evolving end-to-end development across internal and customer-facing systems, spanning both legacy and modern platforms.

This working leadership role manages a team of ~12 (developers, QA, scrum master, and implementation specialist) while remaining technically involved—reviewing code, setting standards, and driving automation and best practices. A key opportunity to bring structure, consistency, and a mature DevOps culture to a .NET/C# environment and elevate overall engineering capability.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the full SDLC from planning and requirements through development, QA, release, and ongoing support.
• Provide clear, consistent reporting across delivery, quality, and support to ensure full visibility of progress and system health.
• Design, build, and continuously enhance CI/CD pipelines to automate build, integration, and deployment.
• Drive mature release management with predictable, low-risk deployments, rollback capability, and robust change control.
• Champion a DevOps culture focused on shared ownership, automation-first practices, and strong feedback loops across teams.
• Establish and embed unit testing as a core engineering practice.
• Define and implement a comprehensive test strategy covering unit, integration, regression, and automation.
• Lead QA resources and integrate quality gates into the pipeline, ensuring testing is continuous rather than a final step.

Job Experience and skill required

• Tertiary qualifications
• 9+ years in Software Development with a demonstrable progression into technical leadership.
• Hands-on experience of building SDLC processes from an immature baseline into a repeatable practice
• Experience with .NET / C# ecosystems, across both legacy and modern codebases
• Strong DevOps background: CI/CD pipeline design, release automation and configuration management.
• Cloud experience is highly beneficial, particularly the ability to plan and lead a migration
• Demonstrated experience defining and implementing test strategy, including unit testing and test automation