Discovery – Group Information Services – The Digital Lab

AI Developer

About Discovery 

Discovery’s core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. We seek out and invest in exceptional individuals who understand and support our core purpose, and whose own values align with those of Discovery. Our fast-paced and dynamic environment enables smart, self-driven people to be their best. As global thought leaders, Discovery is passionate about innovating in order to not only achieve financial success, but to ignite positive and meaningful change within our society.

About Group Information Services - The Digital Lab

Working in a high-performance organisation that prides itself in attracting the finest talent, we challenge ourselves to find solutions that make a difference in the world. Our environment is always buzzing with energy and smart, motivated people working on finding the best way to move forward.

Discovery Group Information Services provides the common foundations and capabilities required by the Business Information Services in each Discovery Product House (Health, Life, Insure, Invest, Bank, Vitality), across Discovery Primary Markets (South Africa and the United Kingdom) and in support of Discovery Partner Markets worldwide.

The GIS Digital Lab champions the use of digital approaches and technologies across Discovery, designing and delivering the organisational roadmap for digital transformation, in order to achieve market leading customer experience, employee satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Key Purpose

The AI Developer is responsible for collaborating with the Digital Innovation and Product Management team to understand business requirements and develop effective AI web-based solutions. The role supports the full application development lifecycle, including requirements gathering, solution design, development, testing, deployment, and post-release support, while ensuring high-quality, maintainable code.

The incumbent is also responsible for supporting, maintaining, and troubleshooting applications across development, testing, and production environments to ensure optimal system performance and reliability.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• Participate in new business development through ideation, prototype development, and project estimates 
• Develop, test, and maintain the deployed application software with high quality and standards
• Usability testing new features to incorporate feedback into the digital product development process
• Research new techniques, tools, and best practices and share that knowledge with the team and community 
• Perform analysis at a strategic level and understand principles of business, technical and enterprise architecture 
• Distinguish between business, functional and non-functional requirements and how to implement them 
• Collaborate with product managers and designers to ensure a successful, high-quality product and great user experience 
• Analyse, maintain and enhance existing application and troubleshoot issues with efficiency 
• Perform accurate development estimation 
• Produce technical specifications and designs 
• Present to senior stakeholders 
• Offer support and guidance to junior staff and peers 

Personal Attributes and Skills

• Understanding of the evolving digital world on both the demand side (how people/ companies are using technology) and the supply side (extensive hardware and software knowledge).
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to integrate AI into applications, APIs, automation, and data workflows
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to explain digital concepts and technologies to business leaders, as well as business concepts to technologists.
• Experience analysing and interpreting data, presenting that data and executing necessary improvements, and monitoring and evaluating KPIs and digital metrics.

Education and Experience

• IT related Degree or Diploma (BSc/BTech or similar). 
• Relevant Cloud platform certification (GCP, Azure etc.) and Java certification
• 3+ years systems development experience 
• Experience with SOAP and REST services 
• Unit testing and mocking frameworks 
• Source control, experience with GIT 
• Experience with industry standard Application Servers (preferably WebLogic) 
• Knowledge of OO design principles and development patterns 
• Development of solutions using cloud platform services (Azure, GCP)
• DevOps/Continuous integration
• Exposure to the Atlassian tool suite (Jira, Confluence, Bamboo and Bitbucket) 

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   
                             
The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.