Tech Lead (South Africa based only) Remote R600,000-R900,000/year €30,600-€45,900

• Remote Job

This is a remote position.

"Own the entire e-commerce and operations stack - know what every tool does, how they connect, whether each is the right choice, and keep the whole system performing at the standard a premium brand requires."

The tech stack handles a global premium DTC business across four languages, four markets, multiple currencies, a fulfilment partner, a financial system of record, and a growing product ecosystem. This role owns all of it - every tool, every integration, every data flow. It is a technical operations lead who also develops: someone who knows when to write the code themselves and when to brief a specialist, and whose judgment about that distinction is as important as their technical ability.

The near-term project that defines the first phase of this role is significant: leading the evolution of the Shopify store from a tweaked premium theme to a fully custom design, end-to-end, in collaboration with an external design partner. Beyond that, Social Snowball setup and a loyalty programme migration are live from day one. This is a brand running meaningful paid media across four markets - downtime and data quality failures have direct commercial consequences, which means this role carries real operational weight, not just a development backlog.

You'll own the technical backbone of a brand going global - architecting the stack that supports new markets, new categories, and a custom site built to match what the business creates.

Every tool in the tech stack - Shopify Plus, Klaviyo, Exact Online, Xcore, Boxture, Richpanel, server-side tracking, feed platforms, consent management, affiliate and loyalty - is yours to own, evaluate, and maintain. You continuously assess whether each tool is the right choice and recommend changes with a clear business case. You manage a network of specialist freelancers: brief them clearly, review their output, and own the quality.

You own Shopify Plus configuration, theme code, and platform health - including Shopify Markets across English, Dutch, German, and French with multi-currency checkout. Site performance is held to concrete standards: LCP under 2.5s, CLS below 0.1, mobile PageSpeed above 85. The near-term priority is leading the full custom theme build with an external design partner - from architecture and design handoff through to QA and go-live.

You own all product feed management across Google Merchant Center, Meta Commerce Manager, and Microsoft/Bing - feed health, market-specific pricing and language, Shopping eligibility, and catalogue quality. You own the server-side tracking setup for Meta, Google, and TikTok, where accuracy at ad spend levels is a commercial priority. Affiliate setup and the loyalty programme migration from day one are live projects, not future scope.

You build and maintain a reliable data layer across the full stack - clean data flows between Shopify, Klaviyo, GA4, Exact, and marketing platforms - and a single source of truth the whole team can use without asking a developer. AI tools are standard in your development workflow: code generation, debugging, integration scripting, and internal automations where manual processes can be eliminated. You evaluate ERP requirements and will lead the integration architecture for market expansion when that scope opens.

A complete audit of the current stack - integrations, consent management per market, loyalty programme, and Shopify Plus health. Performance scores, integration quality, and Markets configuration reviewed. Affiliate setup requirements and loyalty migration options assessed - both are live from day one.

Critical integration issues are resolved and performance benchmarks are met or an improvement plan is in place. The custom theme build is underway with a clear timeline. A working rhythm with the E-commerce Manager and app developer is established and functioning.

Project delivery on time and scope, store uptime and incident-free weeks, and stack improvement velocity - open critical issues resolved - tracked every week. For a brand running significant paid media, uptime is a revenue metric, not an IT metric.

Shopify Plus expertise, owned at a senior level. You've held deep technical ownership of a Shopify Plus store - theme development, Liquid, APIs, checkout extensibility, and the app ecosystem. You know where the platform helps and where it fights you, and you have specific, hard-won opinions on both.

Shopify Markets experience with real edge cases. You've built and managed multilingual, multi-currency international storefronts. The Shopify Markets question in the assignment is the strongest filter - generic answers signal limited real-world experience.

A systems thinker, not a feature builder. You think in data flows and integrations, not individual tools. You can map a full stack and identify where the risks sit before they surface as incidents.

Custom theme development - led, not contributed to. You've taken a bespoke Shopify theme from design handoff to live site, owned the architecture, managed the QA, and held the performance standards throughout.

Product feed and channel integration ownership. You've owned Google Merchant Center, Meta Commerce Manager, and feed management for a DTC brand running significant paid media. You know what breaks most often and why.

Data ownership with dashboards the team actually uses. You've built or maintained a reliable data layer and produced dashboards that non-technical colleagues use without asking a developer to interpret them.

AI-native in your development workflow. You use AI tools as a standard part of how you build - code generation, debugging, documentation, integration scripting. This is already how you work, not an aspiration.