Lead Software Engineer

Humankind Group; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Humankind Group is seeking an experienced Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership in a high-performing development team. The role blends coding with architectural guidance, mentoring, and driving modern practices such as CI/CD, DevSecOps and AI-assisted development to deliver scalable web and API solutions.

You will guide product and QA teams, champion secure-by-design principles and help modernise engineering practices across cloud delivery and automated testing.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
• At least 3 years in a Lead or Senior Engineering capacity
• Strong Full Stack development exposure across front-end, back-end, APIs and databases
• Experience with modern back-end tech (Node.js)
• Strong front-end experience (Angular, React/Next.js)
• Deep understanding of HTML5, CSS3, responsive design and component-driven architecture
• Experience with state-management (NgRx, Redux, Pinia, Zustand)
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS)
• Hands-on CI/CD, DevOps and observability practices
• Experience with relational/non-relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, DynamoDB)
• Experience designing/consuming REST, GraphQL, gRPC APIs
• Knowledge of microservices, event-driven architectures
• Automated testing (unit/integration/API/e2e)
• Secure-by-design and OWASP principles
• Experience in Agile/Scrum or Kanban environments
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, ChatGPT)
• Experience building AI-powered production apps (Anthropic Claude, AWS Bedrock, RAG, embeddings)
• Terraform/Bicep and IaC
• Observability, logging, metrics, tracing

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test and deploy end-to-end solutions across front-end, back-end, API and database layers
• Provide technical leadership, architecture guidance and hands-on development
• Conduct code reviews, pair programming and mentoring
• Establish and maintain coding, testing and engineering standards
• Design scalable software architectures and API solutions
• Drive modern Agile and DevOps practices including CI/CD and observability
• Collaborate with Product, QA and DevOps to translate business requirements
• Mentor Senior/Intermediate/Junior developers
• Address technical debt, vulnerabilities, performance issues and incidents
• Champion secure-by-design and compliance requirements
• Support technical interviews, onboarding and capability development
• Promote AI-assisted development tooling and responsible usage
• Contribute to AI-powered features using modern LLM tech
• Maintain documentation, architecture diagrams, API specs and runbooks
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT or related field
• 10+ years of professional experience; 3+ years in Lead/Senior capacity
• Proven experience providing technical direction, code reviews and mentoring
• Strong hands-on experience across full stack and databases
• Experience with Node.js and modern front-end frameworks
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure/AWS)
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, AKS or EKS
• CI/CD pipelines and DevOps
• Git and modern development workflows
• Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases
• Experience designing REST/GraphQL/gRPC APIs
• Strong understanding of software architecture and microservices
• Experience with automated testing
• Secure software development and OWASP principles
• Experience in Agile/Scrum or Kanban environments
• Awareness of AI-assisted software engineering tools
• Experience building AI-powered production applications including AI agents and vector databases

Skills

Technical leadership

Full stack

Cloud platforms

CI/CD

DevSecOps

AI-assisted dev

Code reviews

Mentoring

REST/GraphQL/gRPC

Docker/Kubernetes

Azure AWS

NGRx/Redux

Angular

React/Next.js

SQL/NoSQL databases

Microservices

Security (OWASP)

Agile/Scrum/Kanban

AI tooling (Cursor/ChatGPT)

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology

Tools

Azure

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Our client is looking for an experienced Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership within a high-performing software development environment.

This is a player-coach role suited to a technically strong Full Stack Engineer who enjoys writing production code while guiding and mentoring other developers. You will be responsible for designing and delivering scalable web and API solutions, driving architectural decisions, maintaining engineering standards and partnering with Product, QA and DevOps teams to deliver secure, high-quality software.

The successful candidate will play a key role in modernising engineering practices, including cloud delivery, CI/CD, automated testing, DevSecOps and AI-assisted software development.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test and deploy end-to-end solutions across the front-end, back-end, API and database layers.
• Provide technical leadership, architecture guidance and hands-on development.
• Conduct code reviews, pair programming and technical mentoring.
• Establish and maintain coding, testing and engineering standards.
• Design scalable and maintainable software architectures and API solutions.
• Drive modern Agile and DevOps practices, including CI/CD, automated testing and observability.
• Work closely with Product, Business Analysis, QA and DevOps teams to translate business requirements into effective technical solutions.
• Mentor Senior, Intermediate and Junior Software Developers and support their technical development.
• Identify and address technical debt, vulnerabilities, performance issues and production incidents.
• Champion secure-by-design principles and applicable compliance requirements.
• Support technical interviews, onboarding and engineering capability development.
• Promote responsible and effective use of AI-assisted development tools.
• Contribute to the design and delivery of AI-powered features using modern LLM technologies.
• Maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, API specifications and runbooks.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or a related field.
• 10+ years' professional software engineering experience, with strong Full Stack development exposure.
• At least 3 years' experience in a Lead or Senior Engineering capacity.
• Proven experience providing technical direction, conducting code reviews and mentoring developers.
• Strong hands-on experience across front-end, back-end, APIs and databases.
• Experience with one or more modern back-end technologies such as:
• Node.js
• Strong front-end experience with one or more of:
• Angular
• React / Next.js
• Strong understanding of HTML5, CSS3, responsive design and component-driven architecture.
• Experience with state-management frameworks such as NgRx, Redux, Pinia or Zustand.
• Experience with modern front-end tooling such as Vite, Webpack, npm or pnpm.
• Experience with cloud platforms, particularly Microsoft Azure and/or AWS.
• Strong experience with Docker, Kubernetes, AKS or EKS.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Strong Git and modern software development workflow experience.
• Experience with relational and/or non-relational databases such as SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis or DynamoDB.
• Experience designing and consuming REST, GraphQL and/or gRPC APIs.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, microservices and event-driven architectures.
• Experience with automated testing across unit, integration, API and end-to-end testing.
• Strong understanding of secure software development and OWASP principles.
• Experience working within Agile/Scrum or Kanban environments.

A strong understanding of AI-assisted software engineering is required, including practical experience with tools such as:

• Cursor
• ChatGPT

Experience using AI tools for coding, refactoring, debugging, code reviews, test generation and technical documentation will be highly advantageous.

Experience building AI-powered production applications is also highly desirable, particularly exposure to:

• Anthropic Claude
• AWS Bedrock
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Embeddings and vector databases
• AI agents

Advantageous Experience

• Experience within financial technology, banking, financial services or another regulated environment.
• Experience working with high-availability production systems.
• Relevant Azure or AWS certifications.
• Agile/Scrum or SAFe certifications.
• Experience with accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Experience with performance optimisation and Core Web Vitals.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform or Bicep.
• Experience with observability, logging, metrics and distributed tracing.

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Technical Leadership
• Strategic Thinking
• Strong Problem-Solving and Decision-Making
• Accountability and Ownership
• Mentoring and Coaching Ability
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement
• Strong Engineering Judgement
• Ethics, Integrity and Security Awareness

Why This Opportunity?

This is an opportunity to take a hands-on technical leadership role where you will influence architecture, engineering standards and delivery while remaining actively involved in software development.

You will work with modern technologies across Full Stack Engineering, Cloud, DevOps and Artificial Intelligence, while helping develop the technical capability of a broader engineering team.

If you are an experienced Lead Software Engineer who enjoys solving complex technical problems, building scalable solutions and developing other engineers, we would like to hear from you.