Bash→
Senior Web Engineer at Bash in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Skills
Job Description
WHO WE ARE AT BASH
We are a team of leaders, bold thinkers and friends, and we’re on a mission to create remarkable omni-channel experiences for our customers.
We believe that by being Bold, Accountable, Simple and Human, our values will lead us forward, keeping us real, connected and directed.
By leveraging the power of technology and exceptional talent, we are building products that bring the physical and digital world together to create communities that prosper. This journey requires grit, ambition and teamwork as we transform SA retail for the better.
And we’re only just getting started. Now is the time to jump onboard.
Bash is TFG's e-commerce and omnichannel platform, powering multi-brand storefronts across one of South Africa's largest retail groups. We handle high-traffic, high-stakes transactional workloads where performance directly impacts conversion and revenue. Our stack is built on Next.js, React, and Node.js (Client APIs), with frontend workloads deployed at the edge via Cloudflare
We're hiring a Senior Web Engineer to own the technical direction of our web platform. This isn't a "write features and ship tickets" role. You'll shape how we build, set the standards others follow, and make architectural decisions that compound across multiple storefronts and brands.
What you'll own
- Frontend platform strategy: rendering architecture (SSR/SSG/ISR trade-offs), build pipeline performance, framework upgrades, and the technical roadmap for our web surfaces.
- Architectural standards: patterns for our Client API layer, data fetching strategies, state management, and how we structure code across a multi-brand, multi-storefront environment.
- Observability: you believe production is a feature environment. You'll own how we instrument, monitor, and debug our frontend systems (OpenTelemetry, structured logging, real-user monitoring, feature-flagging).
- Technical leadership: mentoring web engineers across the department, representing frontend in cross-functional architecture decisions, and writing the docs and RFCs that change how the team thinks.
You've done this before
- Owned a frontend platform, design system, or significant shared infrastructure at scale, not just contributed to one.
- Made architectural decisions in a high-traffic e-commerce or transactional environment where latency and uptime have direct commercial impact.
- Debugged gnarly production performance issues under pressure — you know your way around flame charts, network waterfalls, and memory profiles.
- Influenced technical direction beyond your immediate team. You've written proposals that changed how engineering orgs operate.
- Shipped code that other engineers build on top of. You think about developer experience as a product.
- Said no to things and been right about it.
What you bring
- Deep Next.js and React expertise: not just usage, but opinions. You understand the rendering model, the trade-offs of different data-fetching patterns, and when the framework is fighting you.
- Performance engineering instinct: you've optimised Critical Rendering Path, reduced bundle sizes, improved INP/LCP/CLS on real production traffic. You measure before you optimise.
- Distributed systems awareness: you understand caching layers, CDN and Cache header behaviour, BFF patterns, and how a frontend request becomes ten backend calls.
- Strong communication: you write clearly, review code thoughtfully, and can explain complex trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent on frontend-heavy, production-grade systems.
The environment
- Stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js (BFF/Client APIs), Cloudflare (edge workers, DNS, WAF), OpenTelemetry.
- Scale: Multi-brand storefronts across TFG's portfolio. Decisions you make here ripple across brands.
- Location: Cape Town or Johannesburg preferred. We operate as a distributed team within SA.
This probably isn't for you if
- You're looking for a role where the tech choices are already made and you just execute.
- You prefer to work in isolation rather than lifting the engineers around you.
- You think "senior" means years of experience rather than scope of impact.
We ask a few optional demographic questions to monitor fairness in hiring and comply with South Africa’s Employment Equity requirements. Your responses are confidential - stored separately from your application and never shown to hiring panels. We review the data only in aggregate to strengthen our sourcing so pipelines are diverse and all candidates receive equitable support. You can skip any question.
JOINING THE BASH TEAM
We empower our people to choose where they would like to do their best work, with the tools they need to get there but we also encourage our teams to travel so we can also make magic happen face to face. Our offices are a vibe, which doesn’t hurt. They are decked out to make collaboration easy and help our team create lasting connections with each other. We bring teams together for planning, celebration, ideation and onboarding, and more.
BASH PERKS
Our perks are supercharged by our intangible benefits, like the optionality that comes with building a hyper growth business, being surrounded by the best talent in the biz and building great products that wow our customers and drive growth for our country.
Best of the Best - The wealth of talent we have will surprise + inspire you
Security within a startup - The best of both worlds. TFG's buy-in lets us invest in the people and initiatives we believe in.
Agency and Optionality - Use the ambition and collective force of our talent to drive your career in the direction you dream.
Connection and Friendship - We make sure you connect, laugh and have fun with the team. Play hard, work hard vibes.
Top $$ - The best people, in the right roles, earning at the top tier.
Your Time - We’ve got generous paid holiday, wellbeing leave and even Birthday leave for you to enjoy when you need it.
Exclusive Shopping Discount - Save when you shop across over 500 brands in-store and on http://bash.com.