Pennylane is looking for a Senior to Lead AI-First Software Engineer. In this role, you will use AI as a force multiplier to architect, build, and operate high-quality production systems across backend, web, and mobile layers.
What You'll Do
- Own complex systems end-to-end: design, build, test, deploy, and operate Java/Spring Boot microservices with clear contracts and SLOs.
- Govern AI-assisted code: prompt, evaluate, validate, and harden AI-generated outputs with strong engineering judgement.
- Engineer for resilience using patterns like circuit breakers, retries, rate limiting, and load balancing.
- Apply enterprise integration patterns such as pub/sub, producer-consumer, message buses, and API gateways.
- Consistently deliver Clean Code, SOLID, and proven Design Patterns across services.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, IaC modules, and secure delivery workflows.
- Drive TDD/BDD with comprehensive test suites (unit, contract, integration, E2E, and stress testing).
- Implement meaningful observability across metrics, logs, and traces for production debugging and stability.
- Apply strong security practices, including OIDC/JWT-based auth, secret management, and least-privilege design.
- Collaborate across web and mobile channels (native Android/iOS or modern Web apps) to ensure full-stack alignment.
- Build solutions suitable for regulated environments with strong auditability and compliance controls.
What We're Looking For
- 6–10+ years of hands-on software engineering, especially with Java and Spring Boot/Spring Cloud.
- Production experience building distributed microservices using open-source tooling.
- Strong background with Kafka (or equivalent), Keycloak (or any modern IAM), Docker, and Kubernetes.
- Solid understanding of modern architectures: microservices, event-driven systems, serverless, and API-first delivery.
- Deep experience with SQL and NoSQL data modeling and performance optimization.
- Strong CI/CD + DevOps exposure (Terraform/Bicep, Git-based workflows, secure pipelines).
- Advanced experience with TDD/BDD and structured automated testing strategies.
- Practical application of observability tools (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
- Ability to critically analyse and validate AI-generated code and system designs.
- Comfort working across backend-heavy systems with the ability to collaborate on web and mobile channels.
Nice to Have
- Kotlin/Java for Android and/or Swift for iOS development experience.
- Experience with cloud delivery on Azure (CI/CD, container hosting, monitoring) from an operations perspective.
- Background in financial services, banking, payments, or other regulated sectors.
- Security engineering experience (OIDC/JWT, zero-trust design, threat modeling).
Technical Stack
- Java, Spring Boot/Cloud, Kafka, REST, Keycloak, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform/Bicep, GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, JUnit, Testcontainers, Cucumber, Pact, JMeter/Gatling, SQL & NoSQL stores, modern web/mobile frameworks
Work Mode
This position is local-country, based in Gauteng, South Africa.
