Backend Engineer

Location

South Africa

Posted

15 days ago

Salary

28K - 55K / year

Seniority

Mid Level

Job Description

Backend Engineer

Pty

Role Description We're looking for a strong backend engineer to take ownership of day-to-day backend and cloud tasks, including: - Building features - Fixing bugs - Evolving the schema - Integrating with LLM providers - Ensuring the AWS suite works well with the disconnected GPU server - Maintaining system observability in production This role allows the lead to focus on larger research-shaped problems, such as: - Managing a massive database of interconnected South African legal documents - Improving LLM models - Local model training The codebase is well-structured, well-tested, and well-instrumented. You will be stepping into a working production system that needs an engineer who can: - Read and extend the code without breaking it You will primarily write Python and some TypeScript for frontend staging, with the frontend team improving your work. Responsibilities include: - Managing Docker - Handling AWS - Working with user-related database components Qualifications - A computer scientist by training or demonstrable depth - Strong production Python experience (Django, async, standard library) - Database fluency, specifically PostgreSQL - Experience with AWS, Cloudflare, and Docker - CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions - System architecture instinct - Pragmatic frontend skills (React + TypeScript) - Tooling judgement using AI tools effectively - South African work-time overlap Requirements - Production experience with vector search, hybrid retrieval, or RAG pipelines - Domain-Driven Design experience - Experience with streaming technologies (SSE / WebSockets) - Microkernel / plug-in patterns experience - Experience with POPIA / GDPR / PCI-DSS compliance - Document-processing pipelines experience - Background in legal-tech, regtech, fintech, healthtech, or other regulated domains Benefits - Packages between R28 000 and R55 000 (total cost to company) - Equity available for the right candidate(s)

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