Closing date: 09 October 2026
Location: On-site, Norwood Johannesburg (Cape Town office opening soon and will accept applications from Cape Town candidates)
Type: Full-time / Contract
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Join Edufern and be part of a mission to transform education in South Africa!​

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Company Overview:

Edufern is a South African EdTech company developing innovative educational technology and learning solutions for schools and communities. Our mission is to address educational challenges through accessible, engaging and locally relevant technology, with a particular focus on supporting disadvantaged and underserved communities across South Africa.

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Job Overview:

We are looking for an experienced Technical Lead to take ownership of technical direction and engineering standards across our growing portfolio of educational technology products.

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This is a hands-on role for someone who combines strong software engineering experience with architecture, technical judgement and the ability to lead and mentor developers.

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You will work closely with the development team to translate business and product priorities into sound technical solutions, establish clear engineering standards and ensure that our products are scalable, maintainable, secure and built to a consistently high standard.

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You should be comfortable making difficult technical decisions, challenging approaches constructively and taking accountability for the technical quality and direction of the development function.​

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Key Responsibilities

• Own and guide technical architecture and engineering direction across multiple products

• Translate product and business requirements into clear technical approaches and implementation plans

• Lead technical decision-making across the development team

• Remain hands-on with the codebase and contribute directly or particularly on complex or critical technical challenges

• Lead architecture reviews and provide technical oversight of major features and system changes

• Establish and enforce coding standards, code review processes, Git workflows and engineering best practices

• Mentor developers and provide clear technical guidance and support

• Review existing systems and identify technical debt, architectural risks, performance issues and opportunities for improvement

• Ensure appropriate standards for application security, data integrity, scalability and reliability

• Guide technical planning, estimation and development priorities in collaboration with the wider team

• Oversee release processes and help ensure production readiness

• Work with AI/ML and other specialist engineers to ensure new technologies integrate effectively with our core platforms

• Support technical recruitment, onboarding and development of the engineering team

• Evaluate new technologies and recommend where they can meaningfully improve our products or development processes

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Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of professional software development experience

• Significant experience in a senior, lead or architecture-level engineering role

• Proven experience leading and mentoring software developers

• Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, APIs, databases and distributed applications

• Strong C# / .NET and ASP.NET Core experience

• Strong understanding of relational databases and Microsoft SQL Server

• Experience with .NET MAUI, Blazor or cross-platform application development

• ​Experience with offline-first application architecture, SQLite, synchronisation and conflict resolution

• Experience designing, building and maintaining production software systems

• Strong Git, branching and code review discipline

• Experience establishing or improving engineering standards and development processes

• Ability to evaluate competing technical approaches and make clear, well-reasoned decisions

• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting ability

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Nice to Have

• Experience with Azure infrastructure and services

• Experience integrating AI/ML or LLM capabilities into production systems

• Experience with mobile application architecture and Android/iOS deployment

• Experience working with products operating in low-connectivity environments

• EdTech, publishing or education-sector experience

• Experience scaling an engineering team or technical function within a startup or growing technology company

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Applicants who have not received a reply within four weeks of the closing date may assume their application has been unsuccessful.

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