Engineering Manager (Machine Learning)

Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Machine Learning Software Engineering Manager 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: 4 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com and 2.7 million on Mr D. Show them what you can do.
• Learn: We work with the best of the best, and then some. Work alongside industry leaders and up-skill in record time. 
• Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

You will lead a team of Machine Learning Software Engineers constantly striving for quality solutions that are delivered on time, within budget and scope, and drive a culture of quality and personal accountability.

You will need a strong and pragmatic understanding of Machine Learning development and have direct experience building high performance, scalable backend and RESTful web applications. You will be from a development background and have a good understanding of architectural practices with a specialization in Machine Learning. You will be an advocate of agile and iterative engineering practices and you will have prior line management experience with a track record of keeping highly skilled developers motivated.

This is an exciting opportunity to lead a growing team of engineers working on takealot.com's ambitious development roadmap of one of Takealot Group’s key AI focus areas: Search & Recommendations.

This is a hands-on role and you should expect that at least 30% of your time will be spent writing code and building machine learning models, as well as working with others on your team directly contributing to the production of code and models. The remainder of your time will be split between architectural and strategic planning with peers and senior developers, and the day-to-day people management and development required of a high-performing and successful team. 

Who’s who in the tech space

This position reports to the Engineering Director for Machine Learning.

The skills we need:

• Customer centric.
• Solutions and results-oriented.
• Natural leader.
• Innovative problem solver.
• Curious thinker that understands technical topics beyond the average reader.
• An ambitious and hard-working individual prepared to do more than the 9 to 5 to get up to speed.
• An influencer that constantly grows the quality of engineering through technical initiatives.
• Effective time management and organizational skills.
• Proven ability to develop and maintain positive working relationships.
• Must be comfortable with rapidly changing and/or loosely defined requirements that are refined over time.
• Skilled at active listening and capable of facilitating discussions.
• Strong communication skills with both internal team members and external business stakeholders.
• Strong initiative to find ways to improve solutions, systems, and processes.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree or Advanced Diploma (Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Machine Learning or Engineering) and a minimum of 5 years’ Software Development experience, of which a minimum of 3 years’ developing production-grade Machine Learning solutions is required.
• In the event that a candidate does not have a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced Diploma (Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Machine Learning or Engineering), an equivalent experience requirement must be met, which equates to a minimum of 8 years’ of Software Development experience, of which a minimum of 5 years’ developing production-grade Machine Learning solutions is required.
• A minimum of 3 years’ managing and leading a software engineering team, including mentoring and developing technical teams, line management of teams and performance management of teams.
• In the event of no prior management experience, at least 3 years’ delivering significant Machine Learning solutions as a technical lead, is required.
• Providing guidance to fellow engineers, evaluating and comparing model performance and model architecture, performing error analysis, and hyper parameter tuning. 
• Experience leading a team technically, with a focus on high-quality output.
• Experience working within an agile team that is operationally hands-on, and an advocate of that culture.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• Experience developing software in Python in a test-driven environment (and/or at least in one of the following languages: Java, C, C++ or C#).
• A thorough understanding of computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented design and data structures and algorithms.
• Experience with MySQL or Postgres, and BigQuery or a similar technology in a high-load environment.
• Significant technical experience and a proven track record of architectural ownership and understanding.
• Experience in developing distributed, high transactional and available systems.
• Experience working with Big Data: data volume, variety and velocity.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Experience developing software for a highly-transactional retail online platform.
• A thorough understanding of software engineering practices and best practices, including agile software development, source code control systems and the use of software IDEs and development and testing tools.
• An understanding of software deployment tools, deployment processes and best practices.
• Experience working with NoSQL data stores. 
• Experience working with Kafka.
• Experience working with the AWS and/or GCP platforms, and Docker and/or Kubernetes.
• Experience with building RESTful API web services and microservices.
• Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• Experience with search systems and technologies such as SOLR or ElasticSearch. 
• Experience building customer recommendation models (e.g. Collaboration vs. Content-based, Item-to-Item vs. User-to-Item).
• Experience with Jupyter notebooks.
• Experience with Scikit-learn, SciPy, Numpy, Pandas and PyTorch.
• Experience with TensorFlow, TensorFlow Extended, TensorFlow Serving.
• Experience with Kubeflow and Dataform.

Let’s talk about life @ Takealot Group

• The power is in your hands: We offer a market-related, Total Remuneration Package that allows full flexibility according to your needs. Go on, be the master of your own destiny.
• No doors: We aren’t fans of stuffy offices or siloed work environments. See someone you like? High five, collab, and make something great.
• Remote working: Love water cooler chats and working from home? Takealot.com offers a remote or hybrid working model for the best of both worlds.
• Mentorship programme: We aren’t kidding when we say the people with the best people win. Now’s your chance to be one of the best by learning from the best.
• Naspers Tech Community & Online Learning: Share ideas and grow with global industry leaders who are all just a Slack message away. Love to learn? Upskill with free access to courses on MyAcademy, Udacity, Coursera, and more.
• Good times: Get to know the other extraordinary minds at takealot.com during regular social events and out-of-office activities (think hikes, think mini golf, think good times).
• Staff discount. Millions of products across 28 departments. What more could you ask for?
• Birthday leave: Cake Day all the way. Enjoy your day off - you deserve it. 
• Right tools, right job: Mac or Windows, two monitors or one. Whatever your preference, you’ll work on the latest tech, of the latest tech.
• Help when you need it most: Confidential counselling, legal support, and financial guidance, for free, anytime, anywhere. 
• Tech stack (for days): ReactJS, Python, Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Google Cloud, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes, and all things machine learning. If you build it, they will come.
• Free parking: No more 5km fun runs to your desk (unless you want to). 

Like what you see? 

If you meet the above, you are an Extraordinary Mind. Apply today!!

Takealot is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applicants from previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities will be given preference.