Tech Lead

MyRunway; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

MyRunway is seeking a Tech Lead to bridge business needs and technology. You will lead the development team, shape the technical strategy, and drive improvements across our e‑commerce stack, ERP, WMS, and internal tools.

You will continuously identify bottlenecks, design scalable systems, and mentor engineers to deliver impactful solutions. You’ll work across departments to translate problems into robust technical designs, ensure reliability and scalability, and push for automation and smarter

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on software development background.
• Experience leading developers or technical delivery.
• Expertise in software architecture, databases, APIs, integrations and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience designing and scaling production systems.
• Ability to understand an existing tech stack and decide improvements.

Responsibilities

• Lead our development team and shape technology across MyRunway.
• Turn business problems into clear technical solutions.
• Prioritise, architect and deliver across systems.
• Make decisions about systems, databases, APIs and integrations.
• Improve and evolve our e-commerce platform, ERP, WMS and internal tools.
• Identify opportunities to automate and redesign how work gets done.
• Leverage AI and emerging tech where it creates advantage.
• Communicate effectively with both developers and non‑technical teams.
• Own problems from diagnosis to a working solution.

Skills

Hands-on coding

Technical leadership

Software architecture

Databases

APIs & integrations

Cloud infrastructure

Effective communication

AI & automation

Job description

Do you like to solve problems?

Not theoretical ones. Real ones.

Why is this process taking too long? Why are people working around the technology instead of with it? What could we automate? What could we build differently? Where could better technology completely change how the business works?

If those questions excite you, keep reading.

We’re looking for a Tech Lead who loves solving problems, improving things, and building technology that has a visible impact on a business.

You’ll sit at the intersection of technology and the business. You’ll work closely with teams across MyRunway, understand how things really work, identify where we can do things better, and then lead our development team in building the solutions.

Sometimes that means fixing something frustrating.

Sometimes it means redesigning an entire process.

And sometimes it means building something completely new.

What makes this role interesting

MyRunway is not just a website.

Behind every order is a connected technology ecosystem spanning our e-commerce platform, ERP, warehouse management system, buying, pricing, inventory, customer experience, logistics, payments, data, and internal tools.

A change in one area can affect the entire business.

That creates a lot of interesting problems to solve.

You’ll have the opportunity to understand those problems end to end, shape the technical solution, and see the impact of what you build in the real world.

What you’ll do

You’ll lead our development team and help shape how technology evolves across MyRunway.

You’ll:

• Work directly with teams across the business to understand problems, bottlenecks and opportunities.

• Turn messy business problems into clear technical solutions.

• Lead the development team across prioritisation, architecture and delivery.

• Make decisions around our systems, databases, APIs, integrations and broader technology stack.

• Improve and evolve our e-commerce platform, ERP, WMS and internal systems.

• Identify opportunities to automate, simplify and redesign how work gets done.

• Use AI and emerging technology where it can genuinely create an advantage.

• Challenge complicated solutions and look for simpler, smarter ways of doing things.

• Get into the technical details when something isn’t working.

• Balance speed with scalability, reliability and good engineering.

• Own problems through from diagnosis to a solution that actually works.

What we’re looking for

You need a strong software development background and enough technical depth to confidently lead experienced developers.

You’ll likely have:

• Strong hands‑on software development experience.

• Experience leading developers or technical delivery.

• Strong knowledge of software architecture, databases, APIs, integrations and cloud infrastructure.

• Experience designing and scaling production systems.

• The ability to understand an existing technology stack and decide what should be improved, replaced or left alone.

• Good knowledge of testing, deployment, performance, reliability and security.

• Strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to simplify complexity.

• The ability to communicate equally well with developers and non‑technical teams.

• A strong interest in AI, automation and how technology is changing software development.

• High energy, curiosity and a bias towards action.

The Hard Truth: Not For Everyone

• This isn’t a desk-jockey role.
  You’ll need to understand how the business actually works. Sometimes that means sitting with a Buyer, talking to Customer Experience or spending time in the warehouse.

• You need to be technical.
  This isn’t project management with a technology title. You need enough development experience to challenge architecture, understand the trade-offs and lead the technical conversation.

• You need to like problems.
  There will always be things that can work better. We want someone who sees that as an opportunity.

• You need to take ownership.
  Finding the problem isn’t enough. We want someone who wants to solve it.

• Simple beats impressive.
  We don’t care how clever the solution looks. We care whether it works, scales and makes the business better.

Why this role is different

You won’t be working on one tiny piece of a product.

You’ll be able to move across an entire e-commerce business, understand how everything connects and use technology to materially improve how it operates.

You’ll have the freedom to challenge existing systems, build new ones and influence how technology supports MyRunway’s next stage of growth.

If you like building things, fixing things and making things work better, you’ll probably have a lot of fun here.

MyRunway is committed to transformation and redressing of past inequalities. Our employment equity goals will be taken into account in our selection process.