Senior Java Developer - Digital Payments

Job Title: Senior Java Developer - Digital Payments

Employment type: Contract (On-site)

Contract length: 6 - 12 months

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

We are seeking a hands-on Senior Java Developer to join the Merchant Services Technology Squad. The role will design, develop, integrate, and support enterprise-grade services within high-volume, mission-critical payment environments. The successful candidate will combine strong Java and Spring Boot engineering skills with practical experience in microservices, event-driven integration, container platforms, and Agile delivery.

Core Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• Deliver enterprise services across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, specification, development, testing, deployment, operational support, and continuous improvement.
• Design, build and enhance Java-based applications and Spring Boot microservices using sound engineering and object-oriented design practices.
• Develop and integrate synchronous and asynchronous services using APIs, service discovery, Kafka, and message queues.
• Contribute to solution design and translate business and technical requirements into scalable implementation approaches.
• Build cloud-ready, containerised services and support deployment across Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift environments.
• Apply event-driven architecture principles to high-volume transaction-processing solutions.
• Contribute to DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release readiness, and production support.
• Participate in capacity planning, technical debt management, JAD sessions, and technical design discussions.
• Collaborate with product, architecture, engineering, operations, risk, and other stakeholders to deliver secure and reliable solutions.
• Produce clear technical documentation, specifications and implementation notes while maintaining agreed coding and quality standards.

Knowledge and Experience:

• 5+ years of hands-on Java enterprise application development experience.
• Practical experience with Java 8 and exposure to Java 21.
• Strong Spring Boot knowledge beyond annotations, including JPA, dependency injection and component scanning.
• 4+ years of experience developing or supporting enterprise services.
• Strong microservices architecture experience, including inter-service communication, APIs, and queues.
• Working knowledge of service discovery, Kafka, and queue design.
• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture and service integration.
• 3+ years of experience with containerisation technologies; experience across Docker, Kubernetes and OpenShift is preferred.
• Practical exposure to cloud technologies.
• Hands-on SDLC experience across requirements, development, operations, and support.
• 3+ years of exposure to solution design.
• Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, and production support.
• Experience working in high-volume, mission-critical transaction environments.

Agile & Delivery Experience:

• Operate as a hands-on senior developer within an Agile delivery squad.
• Contribute to sprint and capacity planning and help manage technical debt.
• Facilitate or actively participate in JAD sessions and technical discussions.
• Work effectively across architecture, development, testing, DevOps, and operational stakeholders.
• Ownership of production systems is not a core requirement; however, production-support experience is highly relevant.

Mandatory Skills:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (Master's preferred).
• Previous experience within a bank, payment processor, acquirer, card platform, or payment gateway.
• Regional experience, including working in a faced-paced matrix organisation.
• Excellent communication skills in English (written, verbal, and presentation).

Preferred Skills:

• Relevant Java, Spring, cloud, Kubernetes, or OpenShift certifications are advantageous.
• Banking experience is preferred, particularly exposure to acquiring or payment-transaction processing.
• Merchant Services or Acquiring experience is beneficial but is not a prerequisite.
• Highly relevant domain exposure includes POS acquiring, payment gateways, card processing, fraud, and risk.
• Experience in merchant onboarding, settlement and reconciliation, or digital commerce is useful but not essential.