Software Engineering Manager

Overview

Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Machine Learning Software Engineering Manager to join our team. We are a young, dynamic, hyper-growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us

Think you’ve been challenged before? Think again

• Scale: 4 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com and 2.7 million on Mr D. Show them what you can do.
• Learn: We work with the best of the best, and then some. Work alongside industry leaders and up-skill in record time.
• Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance.

Your mission

You will lead a team of Machine Learning Software Engineers constantly striving for quality solutions that are delivered on time, within budget and scope, and drive a culture of quality and personal accountability.

You will need a strong and pragmatic understanding of Machine Learning development and have direct experience building high performance, scalable backend and RESTful web applications. You will be from a development background and have a good understanding of architectural practices with a specialization in Machine Learning. You will be an advocate of agile and iterative engineering practices and you will have prior line management experience with a track record of keeping highly skilled developers motivated.

This is an exciting opportunity to lead a growing team of engineers working on takealot.com\'s ambitious development roadmap of one of Takealot Group’s key AI focus areas: Search & Recommendations.

This is a hands-on role and you should expect that at least 30% of your time will be spent writing code and building machine learning models, as well as working with others on your team directly contributing to the production of code and models. The remainder of your time will be split between architectural and strategic planning with peers and senior developers, and the day-to-day people management and development required of a high-performing and successful team.

Leadership & Reporting

Who’s who in the tech space

This position reports to the Engineering Director for Machine Learning.

Skills we need

• Customer centric.
• Solutions and results-oriented.
• Natural leader.
• Curious thinker that understands technical topics beyond the average reader.
• An ambitious and hard-working individual prepared to do more than the 9 to 5 to get up to speed.
• An influencer that constantly grows the quality of engineering through technical initiatives.
• Effective time management and organizational skills.
• Proven ability to develop and maintain positive working relationships.
• Must be comfortable with rapidly changing and/or loosely defined requirements that are refined over time.
• Skilled at active listening and capable of facilitating discussions.
• Strong communication skills with both internal team members and external business stakeholders.
• Strong initiative to find ways to improve solutions, systems, and processes.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor\'s Degree or Advanced Diploma (Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Machine Learning or Engineering) and a minimum of 5 years’ Software Development experience, of which a minimum of 3 years’ developing production-grade Machine Learning solutions is required.
• In the event that a candidate does not have a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced Diploma (Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Machine Learning or Engineering), an equivalent experience requirement must be met, which equates to a minimum of 8 years’ of Software Development experience, of which a minimum of 5 years’ developing production-grade Machine Learning solutions is required.
• A minimum of 3 years’ managing and leading a software engineering team, including mentoring and developing technical teams, line management of teams and performance management of teams.
• In the event of no prior management experience, at least 3 years’ delivering significant Machine Learning solutions as a technical lead, is required.
• Providing guidance to fellow engineers, evaluating and comparing model performance and model architecture, performing error analysis, and hyper parameter tuning.
• Experience leading a team technically, with a focus on high-quality output.
• Experience working within an agile team that is operationally hands-on, and an advocate of that culture.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• Experience developing software in Python in a test-driven environment (and/or at least in one of the following languages: Java, C, C++ or C#).
• A thorough understandin