Job description
We Are Innovators & Catergory Creators
Clickatell, founded in Cape Town in 2000, was the first company to connect businesses with consumers via SMS using just four lines of code. Today, it powers AI-driven chat commerce for leading global brands across industries like banking, retail, telecoms, and healthcare — including Visa, ABSA, MTN, Toyota, and Pick n Pay. Over 25 years, Clickatell has led multiple industry firsts, such as tokenized WhatsApp payments, KYC chat banking, and Chat-2-Pay, through its award-winning AI Chat Commerce Platform that enables brands to interact and transact with customers seamlessly.
Purpose
Senior technical authority for a squad/team, providing architectural direction, solution shaping, and technical clarity. Partners closely with Product to translate business intent into feasible, high-quality technical solutions. Line-manages engineers, fostering growth, cohesion, and predictable delivery. Heavy coding is not expected but remains an option.
We Do The Right Things
Responsibilities of the Role
People & Leadership
Line-manage engineers: 1:1s, performance reviews, coaching, hiring, and compensation input.
Build a psychologically safe, inclusive, high-performance team.
Manage capacity, workload, and team health in partnership with the Software Development Manager.
Technical Leadership
Own team-level architecture, system design, coding standards, and best practices.
Lead solution design, assess feasibility, risks, and trade-offs.
Guide engineers during implementation; ensure scalable, secure, and maintainable systems.
Product Partnership
Collaborate with Product on refinement and backlog shaping.
Translate requirements into clear technical stories, estimates, and acceptance criteria.
Surface dependencies, constraints, and architectural impact early.
AI-Enabled Development
Champion effective use of AI tools (e.g., Kiro, GitHub Copilot).
Enable safe adoption for documentation, testing, refactoring, and scaffolding.
Ensure AI output meets quality, security, and maintainability standards.
Delivery & Operations
Own technical execution planning, sprint and quarterly planning, and risk management.
Uphold “you build it, you run it” with production readiness, observability, and runbooks.
Maintain strong engineering practices, CI/CD, testing, reliability, and documentation.
We Are On A Learning Journey
Requirements of the Role
BSc in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
6–10+ years software engineering experience (TypeScript, Angular/React).
Proven people management and technical leadership experience.
Strong architecture, cloud (AWS/Azure), microservices, and CI/CD background.
Experience enabling teams with AI coding assistants.
Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Nice to have
PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka/SQS.
Messaging integrations (WhatsApp Business API, RCS, SMS).
Why You Should Join
Perks of the Role
Medical Aid contribution
Pension fund contribution
Quarterly performance incentive bonus
Risk benefit company contributions
Reimbursable communications allowance for internet and mobile phone bills
Half-day off on your birthday
5 personal days leave a year, over and above your annual leave
Hybrid working with access to office hubs as required.
Home office set-up with laptop, monitor and other related items.
A Bit About You
Behavioral competency requirements of a Pacesetter:
Cultivating Talent: Partakes in driving the development of skills and strengths within the team and recognizes achievements. Coaches the team on procedures, technical issues, and priorities. Leads and contributes to a positive team environment with open communication and clear goals. Listens to team members’ feedback, resolves any issues, or conflicts and escalates where needed.
Managing Resources: Manages resources optimally by making the right decisions that impacts how resources are used and for what benefit. Accurately estimates, forecast, projects, and monitors available levels of relevant resources and makes the right calls.
Expert Exchanges: Seeks and communicates insights. Acts as access point for information within their team and throughout the organization and ensures sharing of key learnings. Prepares and presents reports, and updates advising on performance and capacity.
Risk Mitigation: Resolves problems that are complex and drives decision-making processes. Systematically processes key factors when resolving conflict, managing risk, ensuring compliance, and addressing quality concerns.
Foster Teamwork: Builds relationships and influentially engages across teams to elevate performance. Facilitates brainstorming that delivers the best solutions. Encourages an inclusive culture where voices are heard and being open-minded is valued.
Emotions and Performance: Puts effort into managing the link between emotions and performance that helps others do their best work by increasing self-awareness and reducing blind spots. Fosters a safe environment where others feel comfortable to take smart risks and build relationships.
Drive Execution: Develops tactical plans that support the strategy and plans the detail of the projects, activities, and resources to deliver the goal.
Coordinating Activity: Develops and manages processes conceptually and technically. Plans, monitors work, and accurately reads situations to course correct and ensure expectations are met.
Navigating Change: Delivers change by bringing the team together, aligning their work and navigating them through the process. Stays on track by being optimistic and focusing on what is in their control. Executes by getting the right things done by the right people to deliver results.
Driving Performance: Relentlessly reviews dashboards, systems, KPIs, procedures, and processes, and drives the team’s performance to incrementally improve results. Ensures processes are effective while aligning to best practice and increasing value.
Stronger Together
Clickatell is unequivocally committed to Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. We believe that we are stronger together and that sameness limits our thinking and our opportunities. You are welcome at Clickatell for who you are, no matter where you come from or what you choose to believe. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. But it is not just about a whole lot of different people working together all having their say – it is about us creating a place where we all feel that we belong. It is in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world uses chat technology.
