Apply now »

Principal Software Engineer

Business Unit:  Vitality Life
Function:  Development (Oracle/Delphi/Magic/etc)
Date:  21 Oct 2025

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.

 

Key Purpose

Our Software Engineers play a critical role in Vitality’s successful business model by building and maintaining software solutions, in line with quality and time parameters, to enable operation as a fully integrated composite business, offering brilliant products with seamless, intuitive customer journeys.

 

The Principal Software Engineer leads and plans development across large or multiple teams, providing expertise in many technical areas or specialisms with very deep knowledge in a particular technical area. They are fully competent in two specialisms and are working towards competency in a third specialism. This role is required to influence both internally and externally with 3rd parties based on Vitality standards and governance.

 

 Key outputs:

The successful applicant will be responsible for but not limited to the following job functions:

  • Deliver to standards: Understand, adhere to and apply Vitality’s defined technical and process standards to ensure the effective management of risks and the protection of Vitality’s data.
  • Recognised as the subject matter expert on adherence to standards and champions a modern engineering standard approach at Vitality.
  • Encourage and reinforce the correct application of standards and leading by example. 
  • Provide input into the development of new standards and documentation improvements plus develop and/or write inhouse standards as well as standards for third party tools.
  • Actively keep up to date with industry standards and ensure in-house standards are aligned with industry standards.
  • Review and sign off on new standards to ensure they are in line with the Vitality way of working and current leading practice.
  • Provide integrated solutions: ensure solutions are user-focused, strategically aligned and effectively integrated across multiple teams and platforms to ensure the business needs are met.
  • Coordinate build activities across systems, and undertake and support integration testing activities.
  • Responsible for assuring that software changes and/or enhancements are in line with the overall architecture and ensure that low level designs or integrated solutions meet the definition of “ready”.
  • Work within and across teams to ensure seamless integration and get actively involved in complex trouble shooting if/when things go wrong.
  • Contribute to design, taking into account information security and performance, to ensure that integration works, influencing planning and the management team to understand the impact on the delivery process.
  • Engage stakeholders. Collaborate, work with and develop an understanding of the needs and requirements of both internal and external stakeholders in order to achieve the desired outcomes.
  • Working with senior management, internal stakeholders and 3rd parties to understand the business requirements and technology design, discuss and agree product launch requirements and ensure integration across multiple journeys.
  • Brief and make presentations to senior IT management, participate in and advise strategic and business planning processes.
  • Define future requirements and identify opportunities for future optimisation. 
  • Identify and surface issues and solutions.
  • Build and transfer skills and knowledge. Take responsibility for developing personal skills and expertise aligned to role.
  • Identifies critical areas of future learning and development required by software engineers to remain current, and oversee the organisation of relevant training for software engineers.
  • Coaches and mentors senior software engineers;
  • Presents and participates in internal development sessions (lunch & learn / developer forum / case studies / learning circles) as requested by senior software engineers;
  • Reviews available external programmes and makes recommendation;
  • Puts Vitality forward for industry awards relating to knowledge and skills;

Collaborate within and across teams. Work effectively together with others across varying areas of expertise to achieve the required results. 

 

Personal Attributes and Skills

 

  • Ability to foresee problems and to code for these problems 
  • Ability to take ownership and accountability
  • Ability to work under pressure and to multi-task
  • Ability to take the Lead on Technical Initiatives.
  • Ability to communicate and collaborate with cross-functional teams
  • Drive and initiative to get things done
  • Ability to deal with complexity and migrate between detail and high level requirements
  • Team work
  • Innovation and Creative

 

Education and Experience:

 

Education:

  • Matric
  • BSc (Information Systems)
  • BCom (Information Systems)
  • Professional Qualification Level 6
  • Formal Java Qualification (BENEFICIAL)

 

Experience:

  • Do you have 5+ years of experience in microservice and event-driven architecture  
  • Do you have 2+ years of experience technical lead, and support technical team members
  • Do you have 5+ years of experience in Java, Databases (MS SQL/Oracle/Postgres), DevOps and Agile .
  • Do you have 5+ years of experience in Containers, Elastic, AWS, CICD, code quality (sonarqube) and cloud technologies
  • Has held technical responsibility for the development, implementation and testing of at least one major application.
  • Has a good knowledge of a wide area of IS concepts and practice, including the systems development life cycle, with a deep knowledge of at least one area of specialisation.
  • Experience using the different development methodologies used by the organisation.
  • is a member of professional bodies / institutions where applicable to their role and as agreed to with their manager;
  • is recognised as an expert in their field e.g., speaks at internal conferences / forums; guest lectures at institutions; participates in recruitment drives;

 

Knowledge:

Knowledge of multiple languages and/or technologies and in depth understanding of database structures

 

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.

Apply now »