Senior Software Engineer at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory

The SARAO Software Engineering division has vacancies for three (3) Senior Software Engineers to join the team. You will report to the Functional Manager: Software.

Job description

The main purpose of these roles are as follows:

• Prototyping and software development of the telescope operational software (all stages of the full software development life-cycle may be encountered).
• Provide hands-on technical support in the system administration of the hardware platforms, deployment environments and processing, which may include site visits to the Karoo.
• Collaborate with departmental stakeholders to support engineering, commissioning, operations and early science activities.
• Assist in maturing of software development and quality assurance processes towards greater standardization and improved long term maintainability and robustness.
• Facilitate coding standard compliance and code reviews, which include mentoring junior engineers.
• Compile document sets.
• Provide project management and progress reporting input as required by the Functional Manager and for team communication.
• Participate in the development of project schedules and activities.
• Participate in the development of budgets and cost/benefit analysis for compliance with project procurement policies.
• Make technical decisions independently without direction from the Technical lead.
• Has a deep understanding of version control to the point of being able to help out junior and software engineers.
• Innovate independently towards improving the software.

Desirable additional educational, work experience, and personal qualities:

• Understanding and experience in the implementation of project management and system engineering principles.
• Experience with test-driven development and integration testing techniques, methodologies and frameworks; and supporting systems like revision control and build systems.
• Experience with quality assurance processes and software development processes and willingness to participate in improving software development processes and software quality procedures.
• Willingness to play a leading role in mentoring juniors.
• Ability both to work independently and be a good team player.
• Ability to participate and thrive in a collaborative environment.
• Self-motivated and an ability and willingness to self-train and up-skill independently.
• Keen attention to detail.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

The ideal candidate will have the following competencies:

Ability:

• Communicate effectively (written and verbal).
• Participate and thrive in a collaborative environment.
• Both work independently and be a good team player.
• Troubleshoot issues methodically.

Experience:

• Quality assurance processes and software development processes.
• Programming in the Python programming language.
• Development, testing, deployment, commissioning, release and support large scale projects.
• Developing applications targeted for the Linux operating system.
• Implementation of project management and system engineering principles.
• Test-driven development and integration testing techniques, methodologies and frameworks; and supporting systems

Knowledge:

• Modern software collaboration tools such as Github, Containers, Google Drive, JIRA.
• Python programming language.

Desired Skills:

• Engineering Software
• C++

About The Employer:

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) spearheads South Africa’s activities in the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope, commonly known as the SKA, in engineering, science and construction. SARAO is a National Facility managed by the National Research Foundation and incorporates radio astronomy instruments and programmes such as the MeerKAT and KAT-7 telescopes in the Karoo, the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in Gauteng, the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (AVN) programme in nine African countries as well as the associated human capital development and commercialisation endeavours.

As a business unit of the NRF, SARAO is committed to employment equity and redress

Type of employment: Contract

SARAO reserves the right to amend and/or withdraw adverts at any time without notification.