Specialist Product Engineer - Johannesburg at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Build high-performing, scalable, enterprise-grade applications & build capability in others to do the same. This includes but is not limited to applying critical thinking, design thinking and problem-solving skills in an agile team environment to solve complex technical problems (Front End, Back End and Integration) with high quality solutions & leading all phases of the development lifecycle to deliver.

Job Description

In a DevOps - Setup

• Apply critical thinking, design thinking and problem-solving skills in an agile team environment to solve complex technical problems (Front End, Back End and Integration) with high quality solutions
• Contribute to and in some cases lead all phases of the development lifecycle including e.g. design process
• Determine operational feasibility of solutions by evaluating analysis, problem definition, business requirements, solution development and proposed solutions
• Develop high quality software / application design and architecture in a test driven & domain driven / cross domain environment
• Quickly produce well-organized, optimized, and documented source code to deliver technical solutions
• Ensure designs & solutions support the technical organization principles of self-service, repeatability, testability, scalability & resilience
• Apply general design patterns and paradigms to deliver technical solutions
• Create & Maintain Sophisticated CI / CD Pipelines (authoring & supporting CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins / Azure Devops or similar tools and deploy to multi-site environments – supporting and managing your applications all the way to production)
• Use & configure modern observability techniques to provide a deeper understanding of the application. To do this, leverage e.g. aggregated logging via ELK stack, metrics via Prometheus / Grafana / NewRelic and distributed tracing like Zipkin/Jaeger etc.
• Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting e.g. Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes
• Debug existing source code and polish feature sets.
• Work with guilds and other technical SME’s to improve and evolve technical products and services
• Apply unit testing frameworks and perform integration, validation and verification testing (apply knowledge of stubbing tools e.g. wiremock, hoverfly etc.)
• Apply version control and related concepts and techniques
• Align all application development & development process to Group Architecture, Security & Infrastructure guidelines
• Work with project & program teams (when required) to plan & manage the development lifecycle e.g. releases, risk management, testing, integration etc.
• Conduct reviews, performance monitoring & ongoing optimization and maintenance on applications
• Stay ahead of the curve on emerging technologies and development practices e.g. scripting languages, containerization etc.
• Contribute to the design & evolution of Group Architecture, Infrastructure & associated technical standards for the organization
• Use & configure modern observability techniques leveraging e.g. aggregated logging via ELK stack, metrics via Prometheus / Grafana / NewRElic and tracing using Zipkin/Jaeger
• Experience in:  Angular, SQL, PostgreSQL; Python, JAVA; .Net,  and an understanding of Data Warehouse products  and concepts like Hadoop, Spark, C#, ASP.NET, .Net Core, Web Api + Web Services (REST & Soap), SQL Server, Version Control (TFS/Git), MVC, Meccano, Angular/JavaScript Knowledge, PostgreSQL
• Exposure to Work Flow Systems
• Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting e.g. Jenkins, Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes
• Debug existing source code and polish feature sets.  
• Work with integrated teams and other developers to improve and evolve technical products and services
• Align all application development & development process to Group Architecture & Infrastructure guidelines
• Provide input into project & program teams (when required) to plan & manage the development lifecycle e.g. releases, risk management, testing, integration etc. / Agile
• Conduct reviews, performance monitoring & ongoing optimization and maintenance on applications
• Stay ahead of the curve on emerging technologies and development practices and continuously evolve existing knowledge & skill in preparation for cross domain and other experiences e.g. Secure Side, Testing, Infrastructure solutions etc.

Other

• Conduct peer reviews, testing, problem solving within and across the broader team
• Support the people change teams in the development of user material (Customer, Employee & 3rd Party Adoption)
• Excellent communication, analytical skills and decision making ability in collaborative environments ·xcellent understanding of specific coding / scripting languages e.g. Java, C#, Python, Perl, JavaScript
• Solid understanding of Object Oriented Design and ability to properly apply general design patterns and paradigms
• Experience with API & API Integration
• Experience with test-driven development and domain driven design ·       
• Experience & Understanding of integration testing & QA Automation
• Solid understanding of messaging protocols and web services like SOAP and REST
• Experience with open-source relational databases
• Knowledge of application server containers: Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, NodeJS, IIS, .Net Core etc.
• Good understanding of frameworks and libraries like JavaScript, jQuery, TypeScript, HTML, CSS
• Experience with CI / CD tools (like Jenkins, Bamboo, TFS, Azure Devops) and Artifact Management (preferably Nexus),
• Experience with Cloud platforms e.g. Azure, AWS & Google Cloud Platform Ability to create and maintain sophisticated CI / CD pipelines
• Strong understanding of version control and related concepts and techniques, particularly Gi
• Experience with appropriate unit testing framework(s)
• Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills.
• Comfortable with stubbing tools like wiremock and/or hoverfly
• Experience with scripting languages like Bash and/or Python
• Familiar with OAuth, Open Connect ID and SAML, preferably with an understanding of AD / LDAP / Kerberos
• Familiar with Containerisation technologies like Docker & or orchestrators like Kubernetes
• Understanding of Data & Data Structures

People

• Coach & mentor other engineers
• Conduct peer reviews, testing, problem solving within and across the broader team
• Provide technical subject matter expertise and support in the attraction and recruitment of Product Engineers for the organization
• Participate as a subject matter expert in the development & development planning of the broader product engineering team
• Support the people change teams in the design of adoption processes (Customer, Employee & 3rd Party Adoption)

Risk & Governance

• Identify technical risks and mitigate these (pre, during & post deployment)
• Update / Design all application documentation aligned to the organization technical standards and risk / governance frameworks
• Create business cases & solution specifications for various governance processes (e.g. CTO approvals)
• Participate in incident management & DR activity – applying critical thinking, problem solving & technical expertise to get to the bottom of major incidents
• Deliver on time & on budget (always)

Education and experience required ·         

• 5+ years’ experience
• Relevant B-Degree in Computer Science preferred but not essential if minimum requirements of experience & practical application in the following is evident:
• Cross domain knowledge
• Architecture including Application Architecture
• Infrastructure Solutioning
• Testing
• Web Applications
• Service Side
• Automation
• Messaging
• Virtualisation & Cloud
• Solutioning
• SSL Security
• CI/CD etc.
• Experience as an agile practitioner and knowledge or experience of other delivery methodologies e.g. Kanban, RUP etc

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology