About AGRICO

About us

Agrico is a deep-rooted and steadfast irrigation company. We build long-term relationships with colleagues, suppliers and clients to provide optimal irrigation solutions to the market.

Look us up on our Website, Instagram and Facebook!

What we do

As the largest supplier of irrigation equipment in southern Africa, we offer depth of knowledge, extensive design capabilities, first-class service, value for money and the widest range of irrigation equipment to help customers achieve better yields.

Agrico uses the latest technology to offer elegant solutions that fulfil local needs. We strive to identify shortcomings in the market and make the necessary investments to address them.

Why join our growing engineering team

As a growing medium-sized business, Agrico offers job stability and access to resources and opportunities for growth, without the bureaucracy and rigidity often found in larger enterprises.

Our Culture

We build long-term business relationships based on mutual trust, loyalty and respect. Close relationships with our clients, colleagues and suppliers help us develop a sound understanding of their needs and identify ways in which we can create value for them and society at large.

Agrico has a strong commitment to learning and development. Junior developers are actively mentored while also allowed to chew on problems until they come up with acceptable solutions. Further studies are encouraged and supported, in many cases financially. We strive to promote from within and give team members the chance to take on new challenges and responsibilities as they develop their skills and expertise.

What about working from home? We understand the state of focus and flow that can be achieved when working from home without distractions. We also find great value in working together in the same office as a close-knit team. While we often work from home, we also spend a couple of days per week at our office in Bellville, Cape Town.

What do developers build at Agrico?

Line of business software
We write custom software to give us a competitive advantage in the core areas of our business, including some processes in sales, distribution and manufacturing.

These systems are generally loosely coupled, easy to understand, event-sourced, and written in a functional style. They run on the .NET platform, persisting events and states to Microsoft SQL server configured for optimistic concurrency. The front end is built using React and Tailwind CSS.

Most of our backend and frontend code is written in F#, which is an absolute joy to work in. On the back-end it seamlessly interoperates with C# libraries, and on the front-end we compile it to JavaScript, allowing us to plug into the vast JS/React ecosystem. This setup allows us to directly access our core domain logic and types from the front-end, minimising errors and easing refactoring.

Please don't worry if you don't know any F# - we will train you up in no time, giving you a new (functional) perspective on development that you will carry with you throughout your career, no matter which language you happen to be working on at a given time.

We currently need developers in the following areas:

1. System architecture and design. If you have experience in designing loosely coupled systems, and/or have a passion for functional programming, we would love to hear from you!
2. To write domain logic. If you have knowledge of business, accounting, distribution or manufacturing, and/or have relevant qualifications (e.g. in Industrial Engineering or Commerce), and experience with .NET, event sourcing / event storming or writing domain logic, please get in touch!
3. To build user interfaces. If you enjoy building web front ends in React, and love Tailwind, give us a call!

Fast iteration, feedback and direct contact with colleagues who use the software makes for rewarding work.

Irrigation control systems
Agrico supplies the market with a range of control systems for irrigation machines. As the leading supplier of remote control systems for centre pivots and irrigation pumps in Southern Africa, we operate a system with thousands of devices live on air at any given time.

We develop the full stack in-house, including:

• The design of robust hardware
• PCB layout (Altium)
• Embedded development (C, Zephyr, embedded Linux, C#, F#)
• Back-end (Rest API, back-end for front-end, C#, F#, MSSQL, Firebase)
• Front end (TypeScript, Angular)
• Empathetic, helpful and effective customer support (Zendesk).

We are currently actively recruiting, especially when it comes to hardware design and embedded development - please contact us if you are interested.

Automation of factories and processes
As the largest manufacturer of irrigation equipment in South Africa, we do a lot of in-house automation of factories and processes, with a strong current focus on our PVC pipe extrusion factory in Bellville. Please reach out if you have enjoy working with Siemens S7 series 1200 PLCs, or the storing, conveying and mixing of powders, or gravimetric dosing of powders, or extrusion of plastic pipes.

Resources that resonate with us

• Simplicity matters - Rich Hickey
• Simple made easy - Rich Hickey - a longer version of the first talk in this list
• Starting your F# Journey - Scott Wlaschin
• F# for C# programmers - Scott Wlaschin
• Domain modeling made functional - Scott Wlaschin
• From dependency injection to dependency rejection - Mark Seemann
• Functional architecture - The pits of success - Mark Seemann
• May your data ever be coherent - Daniel Spiewak
• Jet.com functional architecture short version - Scott Havens