Software Engineer - Application Security

Electrum is a next-generation payment software technology company.

Since 2012, we've delivered trusted, enterprise grade, cloud-native software to optimise financial transaction processing. Our deep expertise has established us as a respected partner in high-volume, low-value payment schemes, enabling clients to deliver services to millions of South Africans daily.

At Electrum, we are grounded in impact designing solutions that matter, acting with urgency, and continuously learning as we scale. We believe in creating together working side by side with our clients and teams to build meaningful, lasting solutions. We prioritise making it safe by encouraging open communication, smart risk-taking, and trust so that creativity and alignment thrive. And we back empowered strong teams hiring brilliant people, collaborating hard, and holding each other to high standards while leading with empathy and kindness.

When you join the Electrum team, you’ll get to:

• Be part of the entire journey from the spark of an idea to the final product launch.
• Grow your skills through world-class training and hands-on learning every day.
• Receive mentorship and guidance from industry leaders who are invested in your success.
• Work in a dynamic, innovative workplace where collaboration and creativity thrive.
• Tackle real-world customer challenges and see the impact of your work firsthand.
• Explore plenty of opportunities to grow your career and expand your expertise.
• Gain valuable experience in a leading FinTech environment, contributing to meaningful, high-impact projects.

The Opportunity

Help build the systems that keep millions of payments safe. Electrum processes financial transactions for millions of South Africans every day. We are looking for a software engineer who wants to spend their time building the libraries, tooling, and automation that make secure code the default across Electrum.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will design and ship internal platforms that other engineering teams depend on. You will be the person who makes "doing the secure thing" the easiest path for every developer at Electrum not by writing policy documents, but by writing code.

If you are a strong backend or platform engineer who has been gravitating toward security work and wants to make it your specialism, this role is built for you.

The Role

You'll spend most of your time shipping code on projects like:

• Secure-by-default Java libraries for encryption, authentication, and logging that every product team in the company builds on top of.
• An AI-assisted code review system that runs against high-impact pull requests, flagging real security issues without drowning teams in noise.
• Kubernetes admission controllers and IDE tooling that catch security problems before code is ever committed, shifting feedback from CI/CD into the developer's editor.
• Automated remediation pipelines that don't just find vulnerabilities but actually fix them like having dependency upgrades and configuration drift handled without human intervention.
• Self-service security platforms that replace manual reviews with proper internal tooling teams can use to assess their own posture.
• Pipeline integrations that pull signals from security solutions and underlying infrastructure into a single coherent picture for engineering teams.

Requirements

The skills and experience that matter most:

• Coding in production. You write code professionally and are comfortable contributing to a mature backend codebase. Java is the language most of our platform is built in, and you'll be writing libraries that other engineers consume.
• CI/CD as a builder, not a consumer. You've been the person modifying pipelines adding stages and integrating tools not just the person whose code flows through them.
• Cloud and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Hands-on experience with AWS and IaC. You can read an IaC repo and understand what's actually being deployed.
• Automation scripting. Comfortable in Python, Bash, or Go for the glue work of integrating disparate systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication. You'll be working across engineering, compliance, and other teams. You need to explain technical risk in language each audience cares about.

Roughly 5 years of software engineering or DevOps experience is the right ballpark, but if you've shipped serious work in less time, apply anyway and tell us about it.

Advantageous:

• Hands-on experience with SAST/SCA tooling (SonarQube, Snyk, or similar).
• Familiarity with industry-leading security platforms.
• Working knowledge of OAuth2/OIDC and modern authentication patterns.
• Experience with Kubernetes, container hardening, or admission controllers.
• Exposure to ISO 27001 / SOC 2 controls and how they translate into engineering practice.
• Background contributing to or maintaining internal developer platforms.

Benefits

Why Join Electrum?

We believe in a People First approach, ensuring a culture where you can thrive and make a real difference

Your Career & Culture:

• Career Growth: Delivering world-class financial software is challenging, but your effort will earn you hands-on experience with products used by millions, accelerating your career.
• Strong Teams: We keep teams small, focused, and collaborative to maximise impact.
• Transparency: We openly discuss strategy, finances, and salaries. Mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities that we actively discuss.
• Autonomy: We trust you. You're expected to seek out the data needed for informed decisions and manage your own time knowing when to focus and when to recharge.
• Shared Vision: You'll have the power to shape the vision of how we build the future of financial services.

Practical Perks

• Here's how we support our culture:
1. Flexible Work: Office-first environment with flexible hours.
2. Generous Leave: Starting at 20 days per year.
3. Office Perks (Cape Town): Fully-stocked kitchen and daily catered lunch.
• Social Life: Regular team activities like hikes, getaways, and dinners.