Head of Software Engineering

Data is everywhere. Direction is rare.

We live in a world drowning in dashboards, signals, and AI promises. Leaders aren't starved for data anymore—they're paralysed by it. At Predictive Insights, we cut through the noise. We turn endless data into foresight that leaders can actually act on. We make progress possible again. Predictive Insight forecasts the demand for our customers' services and products with 15 minute, hourly, daily, monthly and yearly precision, using machine learning and econometric techniques.

Because when you see clearly, you move differently.

The Role

As Head of Software Engineering, you'll lead the technical vision and execution behind our products and services—the tools that transform data paralysis into strategic clarity for our customers and users. This isn't about managing sprints or maintaining legacy systems. It's about building the infrastructure that enables our customers' decisions at scale.

This is an opportunity to step into leadership for the first time. You'll build and shape our software engineering team from the ground up—starting small and scaling strategically. We're looking for a senior engineer ready to make the leap into leadership, and we'll provide coaching, mentorship, and support as you grow into the role. You'll define software engineering culture, establish best practices, and build a team that values clarity over complexity.

This is a deeply hands-on role. You'll spend significant time writing code, architecting solutions, and making technical decisions that determine whether we deliver transformative clarity or just another dashboard. You'll work closely with Product and Design to translate customer and user needs and strategic vision into both experimental and scalable systems that our customers can trust for critical decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute the technical architecture that enables predictive analytics to decisions at scale, ensuring our platform delivers clarity in milliseconds, not hours.
• Build the engineering team from the ground up—starting with our second hire (yes, you're the first) and scaling strategically as we grow, establishing practices that prioritise people and shipping value over the following process.
• Collaborate closely with Product and Design teams to translate user research, customer discovery, and strategic vision into technical solutions that our customers trust for high-stakes decisions.
• Own technical decisions around our data pipelines, ML infrastructure, and cloud architecture in close collaboration with our data team—optimising for insight clarity.
• Champion the introduction of software engineering processes and tools that enable experimentation in some instances and reliable scale in others—while staying hands-on with critical development work (yes, this will be a challenge).

What You Bring
Essential

• Genuine interest in growing as a leader—you're ready to mentor, and build a team while receiving coaching and support as you develop leadership skills
• 7+ years in software engineering with deep technical expertise—you're a senior engineer ready to step into your first leadership role
• Experience designing the software architecture and building data-intensive applications with data pipelines in a machine learning context—you understand how to move data from raw inputs to actionable insights
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (preferred) or extensive AWS experience—you're comfortable with cloud-native architecture, containerization, and modern DevOps practices
• Expertise in and Python, with proven ability to build scalable backend systems and data processing workflows
• Proven ability to architect solutions that balance technical excellence with business pragmatism—you know when to build for experimentation, when to build for scale and when to just ship fast and return to it once it's proven value to customers
• Communication skills that allow you to collaborate and explain your process, approach and motivation to various stakeholders, including technical and non-technical people
• You do not work in a silo

Desirable

• Experience working cross-functionally with Product and Design teams
• Experience implementing software engineering processes and practices from scratch
• Background in B2B SaaS or enterprise software serving C-suite users—you understand the stakes and expectations
• Exposure to hiring, mentoring junior engineers, or other leadership experiences (even informal)
• Experience with data visualisation, analytics platforms, or BI tools
• Full-stack capabilities with modern frontend frameworks
• Prioritising learning over being right. Understanding others rather than becoming defensive

What Matters Most

You understand that data without direction is just noise. You're driven by clarity, not complexity. You build with conviction, knowing that what we create helps leaders move forward with confidence, not guesswork.

What we bring
Where We Are Now

Company Stage:

Early growth stage with a small and expanding team

This is a pivotal moment. You'll have the opportunity to shape our foundational product journey with the backing of our existing customer base and our shareholders and investors. But don't underestimate the challenges of growth pains. We're walking a fine line of experimentation and scale that delivers reliable solutions to our customers' problems. 

Let's deliver a billion better decisions by 2030.

Who We Serve

We work with multi-location businesses with high-frequency, high-variability products or services, where decision-makers can act on precise, real-time demand forecasts to drive efficiency and customer experience.

Where We Operate

Most of the companies we work with are in the hospotality and retail sectors. Our immediate focus will be on quick service and fast casual restaurants.

We have one or more customers in South Africa, Botswana, the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. Our current strategy will focus on specific markets where there is high growth in our focus industries.

What Happens Next

We move with clarity in our hiring, too. No ghosting, no endless rounds. You'll know where you stand at every stage.

We'll contact you to arrange an interview if your application matches our criteria.

Diversity of viewpoints help us see more clearly and build better solutions. We're not looking for someone who is like the rest of us. You need to meet the criteria, not be the same.