Search Software Engineer
The Software Engineer will maintain and develop the search stack for Takealot's e-commerce platform, focusing on transitioning from Elasticsearch to Vertex AI Search. The role involves building scalable backend systems primarily using Python and participating in an on-call rotation for production support.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- South Africa
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Bachelor’s degree or an Advanced Diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)
- 5 to 10 years in a software development role
- Developing scalable backend systems
- Thorough understanding of computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
- Writing robust, efficient production code
- Proficient in a strongly typed open source language such as Python, Java, Golang, etc
- RESTful APIs and web services
- SQL database systems
- Development in a Linux environment
Nice to have
- Search technologies (Elasticsearch, Vertex AI Search, Solr, Algolia)
- Microservices architecture
- Agile environment
- MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Memcached, Redis
- Message Brokers, Queues, and PubSub systems (e.g., Kafka and RabbitMQ)
- Containerisation (e.g., Docker)
- Orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes)
- GitHub, Travis CI, Jenkins
- AWS, GCP, Azure
- JavaScript, React, jQuery
Full description
Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Software Engineer (backend, preferably with search experience) 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: Over 4 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com. Show them what you can do.
- Learn: We work with the best of the best. Code alongside industry leaders and up-skill in record time.
- Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com, TFS and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance.
Who’s who in the tech space
This position reports to the respective team's manager.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it:
As a Software Engineer, you will be someone whose expertise directly translates into developing robust software in the e-commerce domain. You will have the opportunity to implement best practices to improve existing software and participate in the development of new features. While we don't promote after-hours work as part of the regular workday, we run a 24/7 business with the need to keep systems up and running. Software Engineers are expected to provide after-hours support on a rotational basis to resolve critical system issues if needed.
The role is focused on maintaining our search stack. We are currently in the process of transitioning from Elasticsearch to Vertex AI Search, so experience with any of those would be a bonus, but not a necessity. Experience with any kind of search technology (Solr, Algolia) is relevant, but even if you don’t have search experience, the most important factor is that you enjoy building scalable back-end systems, and have a strong interest in understanding how search systems are built to scale to that serve millions of customers. Takealot runs mostly on Python, but experience in any of the mainstream backend languages (Python, Java or Go) is a plus.
- Design and build solutions to assist our business users and improve customer experience
- Architect and design solutions with your team
- Develop code, making major improvements to non-functional areas
- Develop high-quality production code for work of high complexity and scale
- Utilize and improve functional and non-functional testing practices
- Champion, challenge, and iterate on best practices within engineering
- Design solutions for complex problems with difficult decision trade-offs, typically system or domain-wide