If you follow us on social media, you will have seen evidence of a rapidly expanding organisation, as we welcome new Swipers to our all-star team every month. Since joining the New Media family in 2020, Swipe has embarked on a journey to scale our operations and service offering, and in two years, we’ve increased our headcount from 25 to 43.
Now it might not seem like it, but there’s a massive difference between a 25-person and a 50-person company. As soon as you hit 25 people, you start seeing cracks in your organisation and you need to do an honest review of your business and what it needs for sustained growth into the future. You can’t manage everyone yourself and people begin to lose track of what’s going on. If you’re not careful, your culture can very quickly erode.
To sustain a growing company, you must be very specific about your company vision, goals, values and, most importantly, culture. In addition to this, the single biggest investment you can make is in your people. Giving your people the freedom and support they need to become successful becomes your number one priority.
As such, we created various leadership positions at Swipe, each with the primary role of supporting a specific team. This was so we could keep our finger on the pulse of our business, to ensure our processes are properly implemented and our people are looked after and have bespoke growth paths to help them reach their full potential.
This new technical leadership team is led by JP, Swipe’s Head of Technical Operations, and Jacques, Swipe’s Chief Architect. While JP’s focus is on processes, best practices and Swipe’s software development life cycle, Jacques provides architecture leadership, guidance and mentoring to our engineering teams, ensuring the delivery of secure, reliable, high-quality scalable solutions.
JP says: “Swipe has by far been the highlight of my career, not only for the growth, clients and technologies that it has offered me but for the talent and people I get to work with. It is truly one of a kind.”
Lourens, Swipe’s Head of Frontend Development, manages our team of awesome frontend developers. He says: “The one thing that’s always stood out for me was that I’ve never stopped learning from the moment I started working at Swipe. I hope it never changes.”
Muneer is Swipe’s Head of WordPress Development. He was a pioneer of software development at Swipe’s parent company, New Media, for 20 years before coming over to us two years ago. At Swipe, he is responsible for all things WordPress and has branched out into low- and no-code solutions and rapid prototyping. This expands Swipe’s product offering with an alternative solution to the custom builds we’re known for.
Technology is always changing, and no- and low-code solutions and rapid prototyping are becoming more advanced every single day. Today’s no- and low-code tools allow businesses to rapidly scale. These tools are gaining momentum among programmers and non-programmers, and we are starting to see exciting trends and big announcements in no- and low-code development.
Swipe has a massive focus on people and skills development, and Theo’s journey at Swipe is a testament to that. Theo is Swipe’s Backend Development Manager. He says: “I have grown in the company from Backend Developer to Solutions Architect to Cloud Architect to Backend Development Manager. I was able to pick my path and when I put the work in, the company supported me all the way.”
The Swipe Innovation Unit focuses on digital transformation and future-proofing New Media, and there’s no better technologist than Rehan, Swipe’s Technical Head of Innovation, to lead this team. Rehan is an AWS Hero and regularly organises AWS Meetups in Pretoria as well as occasionally in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
RW, Swipe’s Head of Mobile Applications, is helping to grow Swipe’s mobile delivery team and capabilities in developing native and multiplatform applications. He has been with Swipe for six months and has already made a big impact in the team.
Our QA team, led by Reinhardt, Swipe’s Quality Assurance Team Lead, works closely with our developers to deliver world-class solutions. Using automation tools and human intervention to ensure continuous integration when new features are added to a project, this team ensures the project is free of any defects.
This technical leadership team has over 145 years of combined experience. We could not be in better hands.
Managing Director & Chief Technology Officer