Senior Software Engineer Technical Lead

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead

Location: Remote-first | Full-time

Role Summary

We’re looking for a technically strong, hands-on engineer to join TerraClim as our Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead. In this role, you’ll lead the development of a data-intensive, climate-intelligence platform that supports decision-making across agriculture, sustainability and climate resilience in Africa.

You’ll be responsible for guiding system architecture, mentoring developers, driving engineering best practices and delivering robust backend services that scale. This role is ideal for a senior engineer with strong architectural instincts, a passion for mentoring and the drive to work in a mission-focused start-up environment.

What Success Looks Like

• You consistently deliver scalable, secure backend systems that power TerraClim’s core data services and user-facing tools.
• You lead by example in sprint planning, DevOps maturity and cross-functional collaboration.
• You foster a team culture built on engineering excellence, knowledge sharing and ownership.
• You identify and implement improvements to performance, developer tooling and system reliability.
• You help align engineering output with product vision and provide strong input into architectural trade-offs.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as Scrum Master, leading sprint planning, daily stand-ups and retrospectives for alignment and velocity.
• Design and architect scalable full-stack solutions in collaboration with product and data teams.
• Implement and enforce DevOps best practices, including CI/CD pipelines, containerisation, infrastructure as code (Terraform) and performance monitoring.
• Lead the development and evolution of TerraClim’s API services and climate data backend infrastructure.
• Mentor team members by conducting code reviews, leading technical discussions and improving engineering documentation.
• Coordinate closely with other leads and stakeholders to turn user needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Champion and implement security-first practices, ensuring protection of user and data integrity.
• Contribute to and improve internal tooling and deployment workflows to increase team efficiency.

Qualifications Required:

• 5+ years professional experience in software development, including 2+ years in a technical leadership or team lead role
• Proven experience with Python, Django, PostgreSQL, Docker and AWS (especially ECS, RDS)
• Strong understanding of REST API design, system architecture and backend scalability
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar) and Terraform
• Experience collaborating in Agile environments, especially in remote-first teams
• Comfortable leading engineering conversations with a balance of technical depth and clarity

Preferred:

• Experience with React and TypeScript for full-stack collaboration
• Familiarity with geospatial datasets, time-series data, or scientific APIs
• Exposure to SaaS product development, especially in climate-tech or agri-tech sectors
• Understanding of Linux-based deployments and infrastructure monitoring tools

About TerraClim

TerraClim is a climate-tech platform built to help farmers, researchers and agri-businesses respond to climate uncertainty with data-driven precision. We provide high-resolution, localised environmental insights across Southern Africa through our growing suite of web-based tools and APIs.

As a company, we value curiosity, ownership and impact. You'll join a small team of engineers, researchers and designers who care deeply about building the future of climate intelligence... and doing it right.