Software Engineer Senior (Backend/Java/Springboot) at Sanlam Group

What will you do?


At Sanlam Life & Savings, technology is more than systems and platforms. It's how we enable millions of South Africans to plan, protect, and grow their financial futures.
We're looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer who loves building robust, well designed software — someone who's motivated by scale, impact, and technical craftsmanship, and who wants to help modernise and shape one of the country's largest financial services environments.
As a Senior Backend Software Engineer, you'll be a core member of a modern, product aligned engineering squad, working closely with product, architecture, and platform teams to deliver meaningful outcomes.


Output/Core Tasks:


Actively participate in agile ceremonies (stand‑ups, planning, reviews, retrospectives) and contribute to continuous improvement of team ways of working.
Collaborate with the Product Owner and Tech Lead to translate product and business requirements into well‑scoped technical work and delivery increments.
Take ownership of delivering high‑quality software that meets sprint and release goals, with a strong focus on reliability, maintainability, and performance.
Contribute to solution design and technical decision‑making, ensuring alignment with agreed architectural standards and patterns.
Write clean, well‑tested, and well‑documented code, adhering to engineering best practices and team coding standards.
Embed quality into development through unit tests, integration tests, and automated checks as part of the CI/CD pipeline.
Support deployment, observability, and operational readiness of services across testing and production environments, working closely with platform and DevOps teams.
Communicate progress, risks, and dependencies transparently within the team, and proactively raise issues that may impact delivery.
Share knowledge, patterns, and learnings with peers through code reviews, documentation, and informal mentoring.
Continuously improve your technical skills and contribute to improving the team's engineering practices, tools, and delivery capabilities.


What will make you successful in this role?

Requirements:

Qualifications:


Relevant Computer Science degree or diploma
Honours or postgraduate degree preferred
Java Certification will be advantageous


Experience:


5+ years' professional experience building and maintaining enterprise grade backend applications using Java.
Proven experience working as a senior individual contributor within agile delivery teams, contributing to production systems at scale.


Backend & Java Engineering


Strong proficiency in Java, with a deep understanding of object oriented design principles, data structures, and core language constructs.
Solid experience designing and building server side applications using the Spring ecosystem, including Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Security, Spring Data, and Spring Batch.
Experience building and integrating RESTful APIs for internal and external consumers.


Architecture & Design


Hands on experience with microservices/ miniservices based architectures, including common design patterns, service integration, and resilience considerations.
Ability to contribute to solution design and technical discussions, balancing functional requirements with non functional concerns (performance, security, scalability, maintainability).


Testing & Quality Engineering


Strong experience with automated testing practices, including unit and integration testing using frameworks such as JUnit and Mockito.
Understanding of testability, clean code principles, and embedding quality into the development lifecycle.


DevOps & Delivery


Practical experience working within CI/CD pipelines and modern delivery workflows.
Hands on exposure to build and deployment tooling such as Maven, Gradle, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Familiarity with version control and collaboration tools including Git, Jira, and Confluence.
Experience supporting deployments and operational readiness in test and production environments.


Data & Persistence


Experience working with relational databases and ORM technologies, including JPA and Hibernate.
Ability to design and work with data models and SQL as part of backend service implementation.
Enterprise & Platform Context (Advantageous)
Experience with enterprise integration and middleware technologies (e.g. messaging platforms, application servers).
Exposure to large scale enterprise environments and legacy platforms, with the ability to modernise or integrate where required.
Ways of Working
Good understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and agile development practices.
Experience working within scaled agile or large delivery environments is advantageous.
Domain Knowledge (Advantageous)
Experience within financial services environments, particularly life insurance or related domains, is beneficial.


Knowledge:


Sound knowledge of backend architecture concepts, including service‑based designs, integration patterns, and non‑functional considerations (performance, security, resilience).
Solid grounding in clean code and object‑oriented design principles, and how they support maintainable systems.
Understanding of impact and risk analysis for technical changes across applications, data, and dependent systems.
Knowledge of modern software delivery practices, including CI/CD concepts, release management, and production readiness.
Familiarity with quality engineering concepts, including automated testing strategies and their role in fast, reliable delivery.
Understanding of agile and iterative delivery models and how cross‑functional teams collaborate to deliver outcomes.


Competencies:


Strong analytical and problem‑solving ability, with attention to detail and numerical accuracy.
Able to think conceptually and translate complex problems into practical solutions.
Clear and effective communicator, able to collaborate well with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
Results‑oriented, taking ownership of outcomes and following through on commitments.
Strong quality mindset, with a focus on building reliable, maintainable solutions.
Curious and learning‑oriented, actively seeking to improve skills and stay current with evolving technologies and practices.