Technical Lead

Smart4 Cloud Limited; Sandton; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Smart4 Cloud Limited is seeking a hands-on Technical Lead to guide a modern digital platform running on Microsoft .NET and Azure. You will own technical direction, APIs, integrations and platform design while mentoring developers, aligning with engineering standards and security controls.

You will work with developers, application owners, QA, DevOps and business stakeholders to ensure scalable, secure and observable solutions, drive CI/CD improvements and reduce key-person dependency.

Qualifications

• Hands-on Technical Lead with .NET and Azure expertise.
• Experience designing APIs and integration solutions.
• Strong mentoring and coaching ability.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and implementation guidance across platform components.
• Own and guide technical direction, design decisions and engineering standards.
• Provide hands-on support to development teams where required.
• Guide developers on design patterns, tools, frameworks and implementation approaches.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure and supportable.
• Promote SDLC standards and engineering best practices.
• Drive CI/CD pipelines and deployment practices.

Skills

Software architecture

Technical leadership

Mentoring

Secure coding

Observability

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Azure

Azure DevOps

CI/CD

API design tools

Job description

6 month Role (will be extended)

Onsite

About the Role

Our client is looking for an experienced Technical Lead to provide hands-on technical leadership across a modern digital technology platform.

The successful candidate will provide technical direction across the full software development lifecycle, ensuring solutions are secure, resilient, scalable, maintainable and aligned with engineering standards.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will work closely with developers, application owners, business and technical stakeholders, QA, DevOps and support teams to ensure solutions are well designed, technically sound and ready for delivery.

The role will also focus on strengthening engineering practices, improving platform stability, mentoring developers and reducing key-person dependency across the technology environment.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership and implementation guidance across assigned platform components.
• Own and guide technical direction, design decisions and engineering standards.
• Provide hands-on support to development teams where required.
• Guide developers on appropriate design patterns, tools, frameworks and implementation approaches.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, resilient, secure and supportable.
• Challenge technical decisions constructively and provide practical recommendations.

Solution Design & Delivery

• Provide technical input into the design and delivery of APIs, integrations and digital platforms.
• Support solution design and technical refinement throughout the development lifecycle.
• Ensure work is appropriately defined, technically refined and ready for sprint or PI planning.
• Identify technical dependencies, risks and constraints early in the delivery process.
• Support story sizing, technical estimation and delivery planning.
• Maintain technical design integrity throughout implementation.
• Drive adherence to software development lifecycle standards and engineering best practices.
• Promote consistent use of:
• Definition of Done
• Code reviews
• Automated quality gates
• Unit testing
• Technical documentation
• Linting and static analysis
• Encourage clean, maintainable and reusable code.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering processes and development practices.
• Provide technical guidance across Microsoft Azure environments.
• Support the development, deployment and operation of production applications on Azure.
• Work with DevOps teams to improve CI/CD pipelines and deployment practices.
• Promote effective branching strategies, pull requests and automated quality controls.
• Support automation across development, testing and deployment processes.

Platform Stability & Production Support

• Drive improvements in platform stability, resilience and supportability.
• Improve monitoring, alerting and observability across applications and services.
• Contribute to reducing incidents and improving Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).
• Support root-cause analysis and ensure corrective actions result in durable fixes.
• Develop and maintain technical runbooks and operational documentation.
• Identify and manage technical risks affecting production environments.

Security & Technical Risk

• Identify technical and security risks within applications and infrastructure.
• Support the remediation and prioritisation of security vulnerabilities.
• Promote secure coding practices and appropriate security controls.
• Work closely with security, support and delivery stakeholders to manage technical risk.
• Ensure solutions meet required security, compliance and engineering standards.

Mentorship & Capability Development

• Mentor and coach developers across software engineering practices.
• Improve team capability through technical coaching, knowledge sharing and technical playbacks.
• Encourage cross-skilling and reduce dependency on individual technical specialists.
• Promote a culture of continuous learning and technical ownership.
• Share knowledge around architecture, DevOps, troubleshooting and engineering standards.

AI-Enabled Engineering

• Identify practical opportunities to use AI-assisted engineering tools and practices.
• Encourage the use of AI for:
• Code analysis
• Documentation
• Troubleshooting
• Testing
• Technical knowledge sharing
• Evaluate AI-enabled practices based on measurable improvements in productivity, quality or delivery.

Required Experience & Skills

Technical

• Strong hands-on experience across the Microsoft .NET ecosystem.
• Proven experience designing and delivering APIs and integration solutions.
• Strong understanding of software architecture and system design.
• Experience with Azure DevOps and modern CI/CD practices.
• Strong understanding of cloud-based application development and deployment.
• Experience with secure coding, application resilience and observability.
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle practices.

Technical Leadership

• Proven experience as a Technical Lead, Lead Developer, Senior Software Engineer or similar technical leadership role.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical direction to development teams.
• Experience leading technical refinement and solution design.
• Experience identifying dependencies, technical risks and implementation considerations.
• Strong mentoring and coaching capability.

Production & Operations

• Experience supporting production applications.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting and application observability.
• Experience conducting or contributing to Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
• Understanding of incident management, remediation and preventative engineering.
• Experience improving application stability and reducing recurring incidents.
• Experience working on client-facing digital platforms.
• Experience with complex API and integration environments.
• Experience with modern DevOps and cloud-native engineering practices.
• Experience with automated testing and quality gates.
• Experience using AI-assisted software engineering tools.
• Architecture, DevOps, security or software engineering certifications.

Personal Attributes

The successful candidate will be:

• A strong technical thinker who can make practical engineering decisions.
• Hands-on and comfortable getting involved in the detail.
• A natural mentor and technical coach.
• Comfortable working across development, architecture, DevOps and business teams.
• Able to communicate complex technical concepts clearly.
• Willing to challenge constructively when technical quality or delivery is at risk.
• Focused on engineering quality, accountability and continuous improvement.

Key Technology Environment

The Ideal Candidate

A hands-on Technical Lead with strong .NET and Azure expertise who can bridge the gap between software engineering, solution design, DevOps and technical leadership.

This person should be capable of getting into the technical detail when required, while also providing the leadership, direction and mentoring needed to raise the capability of the wider engineering team