Principal Telco Platform Engineer

Recruit-It; Midrand; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Recruit-It is seeking a Principal Telco Platform Engineer to lead the design, integration and delivery of all network-facing systems in the telco domain. This role blends hands-on architecture with team leadership of five engineers across BSS integration, billing, OSS, device management, and portal/API development.

You will own the technical direction of the telco stack, drive ADRs, and oversee vendor delivery while aligning with TM Forum Open API standards and enterprise architecture.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering, backend or integration experience.
• Proven tech lead or design authority with ownership of architectural decisions.
• Strong Python production experience building API-driven microservices.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end telco architecture for BSS/OSS, billing, provisioning, and portals.
• Design integration patterns, API contracts, and data flow standards.
• Mentor engineers and conduct code and architecture reviews.
• Provide vendor oversight for outsourced builds and ensure alignment with standards.
• Develop observability pipelines and ensure data integrity across systems.

Skills

Python

REST APIs

Microservices

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Databases

Tech leadership

ADR documentation

API contracts

TMF Open APIs

ServiceNow

Observability

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science

Tools

RabbitMQ

Kafka

NATS

Docker

Kubernetes

Swagger/OpenAPI

Git

Job description

Team: Telco / DevOps

Reports to: Head of DevOps (Louis Gouws)

Role overview

Our client is seeking a Principal Telco Platform Engineer to lead the design, integration, and delivery of all network-facing systems within the company’s telco domain. This is a senior technical leadership role combining hands-on architecture and engineering with team leadership of five direct reports across BSS integration, billing, OSS, device management, and portal/API development. The successful candidate will own the technical direction of the telco stack, including the BSS integration programme, customer portal platforms, provisioning and service assurance systems, and the API layer connecting network operations to business systems. They will also provide technical oversight of the outsourced system builds, ensuring alignment with the company’s architecture standards and integration patterns. This role requires someone who has operated as a technical design authority or tech lead in a telecom or network service provider environment, with deep backend engineering capability and a track record of building distributed, API-driven platforms at scale. The principal must be equally comfortable making architectural decisions, writing production code, mentoring engineers, and managing vendor delivery.

Key responsibilities

Technical leadership and architecture

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture for the telco section, covering BSS, OSS, billing, provisioning, and customer-facing portal systems
• Define integration patterns, API contracts, and data flow standards across the telco platform stack
• Make architectural decisions and document them through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), functional specifications, and integration design documents
• Establish and enforce coding standards, code review practices, and quality gates across the telco engineering team
• Align telco platform architecture with TM Forum Open API standards where applicable
• Collaborate with the Head of DevOps on cross-domain architectural decisions that span telco and enterprise systems

Hands-on engineering and integration

• Design and build integrations between BSS and OSS systems including billing (Sage), order management, and ServiceNow
• Develop and maintain RESTful APIs for inter-system communication, ensuring resilience, idempotency, and fault tolerance
• Build middleware and orchestration layers to support complex telco business processes (provisioning, service activation, order fulfilment)
• Implement event-driven architectures using message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, or similar) for asynchronous system communication
• Develop observability pipelines including logging, metrics, alerting, and dashboarding for telco platform health
• Ensure data consistency and integrity across integrated systems through validation, error handling, and reconciliation logic

Team leadership and delivery

• Lead and technically mentor a team of five engineers: Billing Systems Developer, OSS Systems Developer, UE Management Specialist, and API/Portal Backend Developer
• Drive sprint planning, backlog grooming, and technical prioritisation within the telco section in collaboration with the Scrum Master
• Conduct code reviews, architecture reviews, and technical design sessions with the team
• Identify skill gaps within the team and support professional development through coaching, pair programming, and knowledge transfer

Vendor and stakeholder management

• Provide technical oversight of the outsourced system builds (CSM/SOM modules), ensuring the third-party delivery aligns with the company’s integration architecture and quality standards
• Act as the primary technical interface between the telco engineering team and internal stakeholders (network operations, field engineering, service delivery)
• Collaborate with the Solutions Architect/BA on cross-domain integration design and TMF alignment
• Support the Head of DevOps in vendor evaluation, technology selection, and build-vs-buy decisions for telco platforms

Required skills and experience

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a significant portion in backend systems, distributed architectures, or systems integration
• Demonstrated experience as a tech lead, principal engineer, or technical design authority, with evidence of owning architectural decisions and being accountable for their outcomes
• Strong proficiency in Python, with production experience building API-driven microservices using frameworks such as Django REST Framework, Fast API, or Flask
• Hands-on experience with REST API design, development, and governance, including versioning, authentication (JWT/OAuth), documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI), and contract-first design
• Experience with distributed systems patterns including message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, NATS), event-driven architectures, retry/fail-safe logic, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation
• Solid experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure) including containerisation (Docker), CI/CD pipelines, and multi-environment deployment practices
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) including schema design, data modelling, query optimisation, and cross-system data reconciliation
• Track record of mentoring and leading engineering teams of 3-6 people, including conducting code reviews, setting standards, and driving delivery
• Strong documentation and communication skills, including the ability to produce ADRs, integration design documents, and API contracts
• Ability to troubleshoot complex integration failures across multiple systems in production environments

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in telecommunications, ISP, or network service provider environments - this is strongly preferred given the telco-facing nature of the role
• Direct experience with telecom provisioning systems, network management platforms, or BSS/OSS integration
• Familiarity with TM Forum Open APIs and the Open Digital Architecture (ODA), particularly APIs related to service ordering (TMF641), product catalogue (TMF620), and resource management (TMF639)
• Experience integrating with ServiceNow (CSM, SOM, or ITSM modules) via REST APIs - not as a ServiceNow developer, but as a consumer of ServiceNow's external interfaces
• Exposure to network fundamentals: IP addressing, DHCP, DNS, RADIUS, SNMP, TR-069/ACS
• Experience with observability stacks: Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Grafana, Prometheus, or similar
• AWS Solutions Architect or Kubernetes certification (e.g., CKAD, CKA)
• Experience managing or overseeing third-party vendor delivery in a technical capacity
• Exposure to Golang, Java, or C/C++ in addition to Python (breadth of backend language capability)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible)