Engineering

Senior Front Arena Engineer

Absa South Africa·Gauteng, south-africa·Full Time·Onsite
EngineeringFull TimeOnsite
-Closes Nov 30, 2026

Job Summary

  • Provide engineering capability for the CIB Front Arena platform.
  • The role requires a hands-on engineer who can take ownership of complex Front Arena development and technical problem solving across the full delivery lifecycle, from understanding a business problem and designing the solution through to development, testing, implementation and production support.
  • The successful candidate must have strong development experience within Front Arena, combined with Python engineering skills and an understanding of Corporate and Investment Banking.
  • The role will work closely with business stakeholders and product teams to ensure the Front Arena platform continues to meet evolving Global Markets requirements.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

Front Arena Engineering

  • Design, develop, enhance and support solutions within Front Arena.
  • Develop and maintain Front Arena core scripts, including components such as FValidation.
  • Develop solutions using Python, ACM/AEL, ADFL, ATS, ADS, AMBA/AMB and relevant Front Arena APIs.
  • Troubleshoot complex business-raised production issues across batch and process functionality, perform root-cause analysis, and implement sustainable fixes.
  • Participate in Front Arena upgrades and migrations (e.g. Cloud).
  • Ensure Front Arena solutions are performant, maintainable and aligned with platform standards.

Solution Design and Technical Ownership

  • Translate business requirements into robust Front Arena technical solutions.
  • Provide technical direction for complex enhancements and platform changes.
  • Assess whether requirements should be addressed through standard Front Arena capabilities, configuration, scripting, integration or custom development.
  • Challenge designs that introduce unnecessary customisation, performance issues or long-term support risk.
  • Review technical designs, solution approaches and code before production implementation.
  • Own complex problems through to resolution rather than relying on detailed technical direction from others.
  • Engage with the Front Arena vendor where product expertise or vendor intervention is required.
  • Working with version control, branching, merging, pull requests, and team-based development workflows.

Technical Leadership

  • Act as a senior technical authority for Front Arena engineering.
  • Review technical designs, solution approaches and code before production implementation.
  • Establish and reinforce development standards and engineering practices.
  • Mentor engineers with less Front Arena experience.
  • Support technical analysis of high-severity incidents.
  • Identify systemic problems rather than repeatedly implementing tactical fixes.
  • Improve documentation and reduce dependency on individual technical SMEs.
  • Work effectively with Product, Business, Support, Infrastructure, Data and other engineering teams.

Critical Skills and Experience required

  • 8+ years relevant engineering experience, including 5+ years hands-on Front Arena development and Python experience
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Experience supporting Front Arena deployments within cloud-hosted environments (AWS or Azure).
  • Advanced: Front Arena APIs / ACM / AEL / ADFL
  • Strong: Front Arena core scripts / Production troubleshooting / Solution design / Version control (preferably Git and GitHub) / CI/CD and automated deployment
  • Experience supporting Front Arena within Global Markets environments, including exposure to Fixed Income, FX, Derivatives or Treasury products.
  • A hands-on engineer first, rather than purely an architect or manager.
  • Comfortable taking ownership of ambiguous technical problems.
  • Strong at debugging existing Front Arena implementations.
  • Able to understand both business context and technical consequences.
  • Pragmatic about when to configure, customise, integrate or escalate to the vendor.
  • Comfortable working in a production-critical banking environment.
  • Able to communicate clearly with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Comfortable providing technical leadership while continuing to write and review code.

Advantageous Experience

  • Power BI and data visualization
  • Data analysis and reporting
  • AI-assisted development tools and automation
  • Microsoft Power Platform

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

End Date: November 5, 2026

Key skills

Bachelors

At a glance

Company

Absa South Africa

Location

Gauteng, south-africa

Employment

Full Time

Experience

Valid until

November 30, 2026

Created

October 30, 2026