Why this is an amazing opportunity
This role is perfect for an experienced Software Engineer who wants to supercharge their career by experiencing first-hand what it is like to be part of an energetic, extremely fast growing company.
The sense of impact and reward will be huge. You will help to build a product which makes a very real difference in the world. Be a part of delivering socially responsible financial services to the masses; make it possible for students from more than 120 countries to obtain the finance to fulfil their dream of studying at the world’s top universities and schools.
We are a small non-hierarchical team; this means that you are going to get exposure to all aspects of our business immediately. You’ll gain as much accountability as you can handle and have a huge influence on scaling the company.
Our team is very international and very sociable; you will interact with the broader business on a regular basis. The position will be based in Cape Town.
One of our goals is to build one of the top FinTech teams and cultures anywhere in the world. This means putting a lot of time into ensuring we only hire people with exceptional potential, and creating the best working environment possible. If you want to work somewhere where you’re learning from some of the best brains in FinTech, this would be a good fit.
Why join us
- Be a part of a pioneering global growth company
- Experience the excitement and learn from being part of an incredibly fast-growing young company. No kidding – exponential growth. Happening right now
- Be pivotal in scaling the business by identifying smart solutions and partners with tech at the heart of it
- Enjoy the agility and flexibility offered by a startup culture. A sociable, relaxed and friendly work environment (with a serious coffee culture where you can wear shorts to work)
- We will help you make your mark. Make a real impact on the business and experience a steep learning curve with huge opportunities to grow and develop
- Gain an inside perspective on the functioning of a venture-backed FinTech startup, backed by one of the top European VCs, learn day-to-day management and build functional expertise
- Build a platform that helps to make a very real difference in the world
What you will do in the role
As a Senior Software Engineer joining the team you will be exposed to the functioning of the product, operations and business development teams and you will increasingly take on a leadership and decision-making role as we craft the platform. Support more senior team members on larger projects and take ownership of smaller projects ensuring accurate and timely project delivery. Focus on strengthening internal relationships with other disciplines.
Specific responsibilities are to:
- Become an integral and trusted member of the tech team; be a team leader, coach and mentor, decision maker and handle a full caseload of hands-on coding/implementation projects
- Take a leadership and decision-making role in the technical architecture and implementation of the platform build. This includes project prioritization, evaluating technical debt, technical problem resolution and how to incrementally evolve a solution to reach a target architecture while delivering business value
- Execute a number of projects which contribute to the build of our platform. Take responsibility for coding core-feature implementation projects and Greenfield projects. Make an impactful contribution, ask great questions, and execute high quality work
- Assume responsibility as a mentor and guide for more junior members of the team
- Researching and staying abreast of key technical developments and industry trends and innovations
- Completing reasonable tasks as requested within the broad parameters of the role
What you will be measured on
- Technical acumen; fluency in Ruby on Rails, deliver great code on time and on budget, have an impact, earn respect as a great programmer
- Critical judgement and leadership aptitude; become a trusted and respected member of the team, make great decisions, flag issues early, evaluate and solve problems, communicate strategic and tactical priorities, be a sounding-board for both junior team members and the CTO
- Mindfulness; be aware of how your work and your behaviour impacts the wider result and the impact, not only on the platform build, but on the whole team
What you need to be great at
- Technical competence; love coding, able to learn new paradigms quickly and look to continuously improve and find better ways of doing things
- Excellent critical judgement; able to make good decisions, be trusted, respected and dependable, be proactive and responsive, ask the right questions, raise flags at the right time, able to prioritize and plan workloads for the team
- Mindfulness; be considerate of the implications of your work, really care about what you are doing and the impact of your contribution
- Coaching and mentoring; teaching concepts, listening and adapting, empathy and a motivation to understand what makes others tick
- Team leading and team spirit; we are all contributing to the same platform, so be a great individual contributor but be more motivated by the leading the team to achieve – we only win if the team wins – see the impact of your own work and positively influence and help the work of others
- Getting up the front of the bus; get stuck in, execute, generate ideas, have an impact, don’t just sit back and be a passenger
Who we are looking for; track record must haves
- 8+ years full stack web development using object-oriented programming languages and MVC frameworks
- Demonstrable track record of working with a relational database, for example PostgreSQL
- Professional fluency in open source tools, including github, Jenkins, and others
- Experience of cloud platform such as AWS, Google Cloud or Azure
- Experience in Agile methodologies (SCRUM)
- Capacity and inclination to learn and must be passionate about web development. Really passionate
Experience that would be nice to have (but we’ll trade off if everything else fits)
- Ideally you will have 3 years’ experience of Ruby on Rails, and 8+ years general work experience. We will consider you if you have less work experience, but you need to live and breathe open source coding and possess the attributes described, with the potential to become a great team leader
- Exposure to XP practices (test, TDD, pairing, CD, etc) or a passion to learn to work this way
- Start-up experience. Sometimes the earth moves beneath your feet so you’ve got to be comfortable with ambiguity, able to wear lots of hats, and adapt easily as we continue to grow