Engineering Lead

SkylabX is the innovation-led travel and rewards business within the TravelLab Group. TravelLab Group also owns and operates Travelstart, one of Africa’s leading online travel platforms, providing deep travel industry expertise and scale.

We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Lead to take ownership of engineering execution and technical direction at SkylabX.

About the Role

This role owns delivery, architectural decision-making, platform foundations, the effectiveness of the engineering team and ensuring tight alignment between product intent and technical delivery.

This person will act as the engineering execution lead, working closely alongside the Product team to deliver a high-quality, finished product. Product and Tech share accountability for delivery outcomes, roadmap execution, and overall product quality. The Engineering Lead also works in close collaboration with Commercial, Operations, and external partners to ensure aligned and executable delivery.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys building platforms from the ground up, making architectural decisions, and driving execution in a startup-style environment with real enterprise constraints.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Architecture

• Own the technical design and implementation of SkylabX’s core platform
• Make pragmatic architecture decisions, balancing speed, scalability, and partner requirements
• Define and enforce engineering standards, patterns, and best practices
• Ensure systems are secure, reliable, and ready for enterprise scale

Delivery and Execution

• Own engineering execution across features, integrations, and platform foundations
• Translate high-level requirements into clear technical plans and delivery milestones
• Collaborate with Product to prioritise the roadmap based on technical feasibility, delivery capacity, and business impact
• Identify risks early and actively manage dependencies and trade-offs in partnership with Product

Product and Roadmap Accountability

• Work alongside the Product Manager as a peer to plan, prioritise, and deliver the product roadmap
• Contribute technical input to prioritisation decisions, trade-offs, and sequencing
• Share accountability with Product for delivery outcomes, roadmap execution, and product quality
• Ensure product requirements are technically sound, feasible, and ready for delivery
• Maintain alignment between commercial objectives, product intent, and engineering capacity

Team Leadership

• Lead and direct a small but growing engineering team
• Provide clear technical direction and execution focus
• Set expectations around ownership, delivery, and accountability
• Support team effectiveness through structure, clarity, and prioritisation

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement

• Work closely with the Travelstart engineering team to align on integrations, shared services, and technical dependencies within the Travel Lab Group
• Work closely with Commercial and Operations teams to support partner delivery
• Engage with external technical teams, including travel, loyalty, and banking partners, where required
• Communicate clearly and proactively within the engineering team to ensure alignment, clarity, and execution focus
• Provide regular, concise updates upwards to senior management on progress, risks, trade-offs, and delivery status
• Act as a senior technical point of escalation when needed, while remaining primarily execution-focused internally

Required Experience and Skills

Leadership and Communication

• 7+ years experience as a software engineer, including senior or lead-level responsibilities
• Proven experience leading engineering execution in small to mid-sized teams
• Comfortable owning decisions and being accountable for outcomes
• Able to provide direction and focus in a mixed-seniority team
• Clear communicator with technical and non-technical stakeholders

Technical

• Strong backend engineering experience with Python in production environments
• Proven experience designing and building RESTful APIs
• Experience working with Redis or similar in-memory data stores
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL or relational databases and data modelling
• Hands on experience with Google Cloud Platform and AWS, including multiple managed services
• Experience working with BigQuery or large-scale analytical data systems
• Strong understanding of security principles, API security, and secure system design
• Experience owning and operating production systems, including performance, reliability, and incident response

Tooling & Platform

• GitHub for source control and collaboration
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD pipelines and automated delivery
• Cloud-native development and deployment practices

Nice to Have

• Experience in B2B platforms, fintech, travel, loyalty, or marketplace environments is highly advantageous
• Exposure to enterprise or regulated environments is a strong plus
• Experience building S-a-a-S, white-label or multi-tenant platforms
• Exposure to payments, wallets, or rewards systems
• Prior startup or scale-up experience
• Experience working across multiple external technology partners

What Success Looks Like

• Core platform foundations are delivered cleanly and reliably
• Engineering execution is focused, predictable, and trusted
• Product and engineering operate as a single, aligned function
• The team delivers consistently with clear priorities and ownership
• SkylabX is technically positioned to scale across partners and markets
  

About SkylabX

SkylabX is the innovation-led travel and rewards business within the TravelLab Group. TravelLab Group also owns and operates Travelstart, one of Africa’s leading online travel platforms, providing deep travel industry expertise and scale. Operating as a distinct brand inside this well-established group, SkylabX is building a white-label, multi-tenant travel-as-a-service platform designed to integrate seamlessly into partner ecosystems such as banks, insurers, and large consumer platforms.

We are in an active platform build phase, laying the core technical foundations that will support scale, enterprise-grade reliability, and complex partner integrations. This is a builder environment that values pragmatic decision-making, execution focus, and strong technical leadership.