Systems Architect

Description

Permanent | Full-Time | Professional

*Location:* Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa

*Work Model:* Hybrid – 3 days in office, 2 days remote

*Relocation:* Relocation support offered

The company provides specialist software, services and support to deliver fully integrated trading and business management solutions to companies in the distributive trade – wherever they are in the world.

With a unique depth of knowledge and experience in ERP/SaaS solutions, the company has a wide range of clients including wholesalers, distributors, merchants and retailers, from small traders to multinational enterprises.

The company has offices in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, South Africa, Kenya and North America. Its mission is simple: to design and deliver high-performance, integrated ERP solutions that enable distributive trade customers to source effectively, stock efficiently, sell profitably and service competitively.

The company is a global, growing business that embraces AI and emerging technologies to enhance customer outcomes, collaboration, and continuous improvement. We're looking for people who are curious about or fluid with AI, open to change, and excited to learn how technology can improve the way we work and help our customers, always supported by strong human insight and communication.

The company's field sales app serves thousands of daily active users locally and internationally. Integration with customers' ERP, CRM and accounting systems is how reps in the field see accurate customers, products, stock, pricing and sales history, through connectors for systems like Sage and Xero and tailored integrations for ERPs across the wider group and beyond.

We are looking for an experienced engineer to stabilise and modernise our legacy integration system, a mix of templated integrations and many bespoke ones built for individual customers. You will set the technical direction and see it through: making the bespoke solutions stable and well tested, then gradually replacing them with modernised integrations, without disrupting the customers who depend on them.

This is not an ivory-tower role. Our architects stay close to the code, the infrastructure and the team, and good designs here are the ones that survive contact with real customer data. We believe good ideas come from anywhere, and we want someone who will help evolve how we approach system design.

If you are someone who sets out to be learning continuously, who reaches for robust and maintainable solutions rather than quick fixes, and who enjoys explaining why as much as deciding what, this might be just the role for you.

Key Responsibilities

• ⁠ ⁠Be part of our Integration team, and lead the technical work to stabilise and modernise our legacy integration system
• ⁠ ⁠Assess the current system, define a target architecture, and plan an incremental migration that keeps customers running
• ⁠ ⁠Improve stability first: observability (logging, metrics, tracing and alerting), failure handling, and the fixes that stop incidents from recurring
• ⁠ ⁠Raise automated test coverage across our integrations, so that changes to customer integrations can be made and released with confidence
• ⁠ ⁠Own the infrastructure and service design: cloud platforms, containers and orchestration, networking, infrastructure as code and CI/CD, adopting microservices where they earn their place
• ⁠ ⁠Drive the gradual replacement of legacy solutions with modernised integrations, working alongside the team that builds them so both efforts share foundations
• ⁠ ⁠Evaluate options and trade-offs (architecture patterns, cloud services, build versus buy, cost), and record decisions in diagrams, design documents and architecture decision records
• ⁠ ⁠Stay hands-on: build prototypes and contribute production code in Python and C# where it moves the work forward
• ⁠ ⁠Work with architects and engineers across R&D to set technical standards, and mentor the team in architectural and operational thinking
• Outcomes (What Success in This Role Looks Like)
• ⁠ ⁠The bespoke solutions on our legacy system are stable: fewer incidents, faster recovery and fewer support escalations
• ⁠ ⁠There is a clear, agreed target architecture and roadmap, and each step delivered reduces risk rather than adding to it
• ⁠ ⁠Integrations have meaningful automated test coverage, and services are deployed through automated pipelines and defined as code, so changes are low risk
• ⁠ ⁠Legacy solutions are steadily being replaced by modernised integrations, and new integrations take less time to deliver
• ⁠ ⁠Your decisions are written down and easy to find, and engineers seek your input early, before designs are finalised

Qualifications & Experience Required

• We are looking for someone with around 8 or more years of professional software development experience, including several years at a senior level or in an architecture role, who holds a BSc, BEng or similar degree with computer science as a primary focus, or equivalent practical experience, and who has:
• ⁠ ⁠Proven experience modernising or stabilising a legacy production system incrementally, without disrupting live customers
• ⁠ ⁠Strong infrastructure knowledge: one or more major cloud platforms, networking, infrastructure as code (Pulumi, Terraform or similar), and containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• ⁠ ⁠Experience designing and running microservices, including service boundaries, inter-service communication and data ownership, and an understanding of when a well-structured monolith is the better choice
• ⁠ ⁠Experience with observability, reliability and testing practices: monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting, incident response, and automated testing at unit and integration level
• ⁠ ⁠Strong backend development skills in Python and/or C#, and a solid working knowledge of software architecture and design patterns
• ⁠ ⁠Experience with integrations between systems, and an understanding of the data-integrity, synchronisation and migration challenges that come with live customer data
• ⁠ ⁠A track record of leading technical work across a team: setting direction, explaining decisions clearly and bringing people with you
• ⁠ ⁠Experience working in an Agile development process, and a willingness to give and receive constructive technical feedback

Bonus/Nice to Have

• ⁠ ⁠Message queues and event-driven architecture (for example Kafka, RabbitMQ or managed cloud equivalents)
• ⁠ ⁠Integration platforms such as Prismatic, and API design (REST, OpenAPI)
• ⁠ ⁠Accounting or ERP domain knowledge, in particular ERPs within the wider group
• ⁠ ⁠Security in cloud environments, and authentication and identity (for example Auth0)
• ⁠ ⁠Exposure to using AI tools in the development and operations process

Company Overview

Working Environment

The company has introduced a flexible hybrid work policy, where employees spend three days in the office and two days working from home. This approach promotes a balanced work environment that combines office collaboration with the comfort and convenience of remote work.

The company values and respects the diversity of its workforce and is committed to creating an inclusive workplace.

Required Skills

• Problem solver
• Forward Deployed Thinker

About the Company

TMA Proactive Partners

Technology

http://www.tmaproactivepartners.com