Lead Software Developer (Team Leadership, Architecture, CI/CD)

AES Global; Johannesburg; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Real technical authority

Hybrid working

Permanent role

Job summary

AES Global in Johannesburg seeks a hands‑on lead to drive its software development team forward. You will set technical direction, stay close to the code, and grow the developers around you while reporting to engineering leadership.

The role combines architecture and people management, balancing tech debt, delivery planning, and secure coding practices to keep the team aligned with business goals.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years’ experience as a software developer with delivered product.
• Experience leading a development team.
• Strong command of SDLC, SOLID principles and software design patterns.
• Proficiency in a modern language (Java, C#, Python or JavaScript) and OO design.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development team day to day: objectives, roles, workload and milestones.
• Mentor engineers with regular feedback and performance conversations.
• Design scalable, modular architectures and evolve the tech stack.
• Set and enforce coding standards; own quality of releases.

Skills

Leadership

SDLC

SOLID

OO Design

API Design

Git

Containerisation

SQL/NoSQL

Communication

Education

Matric

Tertiary degree or diploma

Tools

Git

Jira

Azure DevOps

Job description

A financial services business in Johannesburg is looking for a hands‑on lead to take its software development team forward. You’ll set the technical direction, stay close to the code, and grow the developers around you — reporting to the head of engineering.

It’s a role with two halves that have to work together: the engineering half — architecture, standards, CI/CD and the quality of what ships — and the people half — mentoring, feedback, workload and keeping a team pulling in one direction. You’ll also be the person sitting between the business and the technology when tech debt and architectural change need arguing for.

What you’ll do

• Lead the development team day to day — objectives, roles, workload and delivery milestones.
• Mentor and develop the engineers around you, with regular feedback and honest performance conversations.
• Design scalable, modular system architectures, and choose and evolve the technologies that fit them.
• Set and enforce coding standards, run thorough code reviews, and own the quality of what ships.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment.
• Take part in product meetings across the business and contribute to delivery planning.
• Spot delivery and technical risk early, and resolve the problems that surface mid-build.
• Build security and data protection into the development lifecycle rather than bolting it on afterwards.
• Allocate people well, so projects land without burning the team out.

What you’ll need

• At least 5 years’ experience as a software developer, with product you have actually delivered.
• Experience leading a team.
• A strong command of the SDLC, SOLID principles and software design patterns.
• Proficiency in a modern language such as Java, C#, Python or JavaScript, and in object-oriented design.
• API design and development, Git source control, and unit testing frameworks.
• Containerisation technologies.
• SQL and NoSQL databases — design, querying and query optimisation.
• Matric, plus a tertiary degree or diploma.

Nice to have

• Cloud platforms — AWS, Azure or Google Cloud — including storage, compute and serverless architectures.
• Agile delivery — Scrum or Kanban — and DevOps practice.
• Test-driven development and pair programming.
• Secure coding and vulnerability assessment.
• Performance tuning – finding the bottleneck and fixing it.
• Project tracking tools such as Jira or Azure DevOps.

What’s on offer

• Real technical authority — the stack, the patterns and the standards are yours to set.
• A team to build and grow, with a mandate to develop them properly rather than in name only.
• Hybrid working, based in Johannesburg.
• A permanent role reporting straight into architecture and engineering leadership.

Johannesburg. Hybrid. Permanent.