L1 Architect – High-Performance Distributed Software Platforms

Location: La Lucia, Durban, South Africa
Working Model: On-site, five days per week
Salary: R110,000 to R205,000 per month plus benefits, dependent on experience
Relocation Assistance: Equivalent to one month’s basic salary

This Is a Hands-On Software Architecture Role

We are seeking an experienced Software or Solution Architect who has personally designed and delivered complex, distributed software systems across multiple products, services and engineering teams.

This is not primarily a people-management, programme-management or high-level enterprise-governance role. You will be expected to remain technically close to delivery: analysing existing systems, making and defending architecture decisions, producing clear design artefacts, reviewing APIs and technical designs, prototyping solutions, troubleshooting production issues and guiding teams through implementation.

You should be able to explain not only what architecture you designed, but also:

• Which decisions you personally owned
• Why you selected a particular approach
• What trade-offs you considered
• How the system handled failure, scale and operational risk
• How your design performed in production
• What you learned from the outcome

What You Will Do

• Design end-to-end software architectures for complex initiatives spanning multiple systems, products and engineering teams.
• Analyse business requirements, existing systems, constraints, dependencies and technical risks before design begins.
• Define clear system boundaries, integration approaches, API contracts, data flows and team responsibilities.
• Produce Architectural Decision Records, solution designs, integration diagrams, sequence diagrams and delivery strategies.
• Evaluate trade-offs across scalability, performance, consistency, resilience, compliance, security, cost and maintainability.
• Provide practical architecture consultation through design, API, code and technical-documentation reviews.
• Coordinate technical inception across several teams before implementation handover.
• Build proofs of concept to validate technologies, patterns and design assumptions.
• Remain sufficiently hands-on to understand implementation realities and support complex technical problem-solving.
• Contribute to root-cause analysis following production incidents and design improvements that prevent recurrence.
• Mentor engineers in software design, distributed-systems thinking and technical decision-making.
• Balance innovation with operational pragmatism, ensuring that solutions can be supported and evolved over time.

Essential Experience

• Eight to ten years of progressive software engineering or software architecture experience.
• At least three years of direct Solution or Software Architecture ownership.
• Evidence of personally designing and delivering complex, distributed, multi-system solutions.
• Strong experience with cloud-native application architecture and containerised environments.
• Practical knowledge of Kubernetes, CI/CD, DevOps and the full SDLC.
• Strong API, integration and event-driven architecture experience.
• An understanding of data consistency, idempotency, message ordering, failure handling and distributed-system trade-offs.
• Experience designing for scalability, resilience, disaster recovery, observability and operational support.
• Experience conducting design reviews and providing actionable technical guidance to engineers.
• Strong production troubleshooting and root-cause analysis capability.
• The ability to explain complex architecture decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or a related technical discipline.

Particularly Relevant Experience

Experience in any of the following would be valuable:

• High-volume transactional platforms
• Regulated technology environments
• iGaming, fintech, payments or financial systems
• Kafka or other event-streaming technologies
• Real-time processing
• Microservices
• Data-intensive platforms
• Platform modernisation
• Machine learning or AI-enabled systems
• Multi-team architecture governance

The Person We Are Looking For

You will enjoy this role if you:

• Are energised by difficult technical problems
• Ask thoughtful questions before proposing solutions
• Can defend a decision without becoming attached to it
• Are comfortable changing direction when evidence challenges an assumption
• Enjoy working directly with engineers
• Can create clarity where several systems and teams intersect
• Remain curious about new technologies but are disciplined about production adoption
• Take ownership of outcomes rather than stopping at the design stage
• Communicate with clarity, enthusiasm and credibility

Before You Apply

Please include a short example of a complex system you personally architected, covering:

• The business problem
• The systems and teams involved
• Your individual ownership
• The architecture and technologies selected
• A significant technical trade-off
• How the system handled scale, resilience or consistency
• The production outcome

Ready to Shape Platforms That Must Perform at Scale?

If you are a genuine hands-on Architect who can move confidently between strategic design, technical detail and engineering delivery, we would like to hear from you.

Apply now to help shape the next generation of high-performance, resilient software platforms

Pay: R110 000,00 - R205 000,00 per month

Application Question(s):

• Do you have at least three years’ experience personally owning Solution or Software Architecture for complex distributed systems?

Yes
No

• Have you personally designed an architecture involving multiple systems and multiple engineering teams?

Ye
No

• Which artefacts have you personally produced?

Architectural Decision Records
Integration diagrams
API or event contracts
Sequence diagrams
Deployment architecture
Delivery strategy
None of the above

• Have you designed production event-driven or distributed systems where duplicate, missing or out-of-order processing had to be addressed?

Yes
No

• Are you currently sufficiently hands-on to build POCs, review technical designs or code, and assist with complex production troubleshooting?

Yes
No

• Is your current role primarily architecture rather than people or project management?

Primarily architecture
Equal architecture and management
Primarily management
Primarily development

• Can you work on-site in La Lucia, Durban, five days per week?

Yes
Yes, with relocation assistance
No

• In no more than 250 words, describe a complex distributed system that you personally architected, the main trade-off you made and the production outcome.

Work Location: In person