Backend Software Engineer

Zappi; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 800,000; Full time

Job summary

Zappi, a rapidly growing consumer insights platform, seeks a motivated mid-level backend Developer to enhance their platform capabilities. In this role, you'll design and maintain backend services for AI interactions, build new features, and ensure the integration of external services, all while enjoying unlimited holidays and excellent benefits within a collaborative culture.

Benefits

Unlimited holidays

Three company-paid mental health days

Private medical healthcare cover

Wellbeing benefits such as free yoga

Tailored personal development through training allowances and mentorship

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience with web development (Ruby on Rails beneficial).
• Familiarity with testing frameworks like RSpec.
• Experience working with AI agents and related technologies.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain the Ruby on Rails Marketing Agent platform.
• Integrate with external AI vendor APIs.
• Collaborate with front-end developers and stakeholders.

Skills

RESTful principles

API development

Database design

Working with SQL databases

Communication

Tools

Ruby on Rails

SQL

PostgreSQL

MySQL

RSpec

Job description

Who we are

Zappi is a fast growing consumer insights platform helping Fortune 500 companies deeply understand their customers. Our platform allows customers to pre-test new ideas and creative content before launch. From new products, media campaigns, names, logos, packaging or flavours, Zappi allows companies to kill bad ideas and improve on good ones. Customers can analyse their insights across their organisation and see their performance relative to the rest of their market. We bring together top expertise in data science and visualisation, UX and engineering to create a platform that allows non-expert users to make high-stakes decisions easily and confidently. Our working culture is incredibly important to us and our team – our retention is industry-leading.

The Marketing Agents Team

The Zappi Marketing Agents team at Zappi are focussed on leveraging leading edge generative AI capabilities to deliver value to our customers. The includes the building out of an agents framework, and the agents there-on, to support multiple marketing oriented objectives, including

• Surfacing insights from our data asset
• Applying respondent feedback to existing stimuli
• Generating new concepts based on data driven insights
• Incorporating third party data assets
• And much more

We also aim to build out an AI service within the Zappi ecosystem that allows other Product and Engineering teams to quickly and easily leverage LLM and image model capabilities within their services.

The Role

We are looking for a motivated mid-level backend Developer to help build and scale our platform. You will be instrumental in developing new features, maintaining existing systems, and enhancing our backend services that facilitate the Agentic AI interactions and data management.
Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain the Ruby on Rails Marketing Agent platform.
• Integrate with external AI vendor APIs.
• Extend Agent capabilities by adding tools and resources for their use.
• Collaborate with front-end developers, product managers, and other stakeholders

Requirements

• 3+ years of professional experience with web development (Ruby on Rails beneficial)
• Solid understanding of RESTful principles and API development (GraphQL experience is a strong plus).
• Proficiency in database design and working with SQL databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL).
• Familiarity with testing frameworks like RSpec.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and efficient code.
• Good communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience working with AI agents, and familiarity with AI APIs or related technologies.

What do the first 30,60,90 days look like?

In your first 30 days you’ll take part in our Zappi 101 engineering onboarding where you’ll get familiar with our business and engineering domains, you’ll meet your buddy, team and manager, and work towards your first code change. Over the next 60 days you’ll have established a pattern of impactful contributions to our codebases, execute a collaborative code/system design, begin influencing the direction of the team and contributing to team ceremonies (e.g. planning).

Benefits

• Salary range R600,000 - R800,000 per annum. Salaries are benchmarked annually.
• Unlimited holidays – we want well rested and motivated teams so encourage people to take plenty of time off. We don’t cap your allowance, but do set a minimum of at least 20 days per year plus national holidays
• Three company-paid mental health days of rest every year (these are pre-scheduled, so the entire company can take the same days off regularly to reset)
• Thoughtfully designed offices to support both individual work and collaboration without interrupting others
• Private medical healthcare cover
• Medical Aid
• Group risk, life & disability contributions
• Wellbeing benefits such as free yoga and access to trained therapists / counsellors
• Paid 24h secure parking in Cape Town
• Free coffee, lunches and in-office snacks
• Tailored personal development through training allowances, coaching, mentorship and career frameworks

Why join us?

We’ve been recognized as one of the hottest martech companies in 2022 by Business Insider and named Best Place to Work by Quirk’s Media for our engaging and inclusive workplace culture. We’re committed to both people and the planet.

Our belief in inclusion means we’re building an organisation of diverse individuals and helping brands eliminate cultural presumptions in their research. Read our Diversity Manifesto here.

We are a values and behaviours driven business and believe that Trust, Truth, Ownership, Ambition and Humility describe Zappi employees on our best day. This is how we strive to show up for our customers, for each other and for our communities.

Earning B Corp certification assures us we’re on the right track and have structures in place to become the business we want to be.

Our commitment to minimise our impact on the environment means being honest with ourselves and transparent with you—about everything from carbon emissions to tree-planting initiatives. We achieved our goal of becoming Net Zero in 2021!

Zappi Company Culture Highlights

• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company for Women 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Work-Life Balance 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Compensation 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEO for Women 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company for Diversity 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Culture 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEO 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Happiness 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Leadership Teams 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEOs for Diversity 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Engineering Teams 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Outlook 2023
• Winner of Newsweek’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in the UK 2022 & 2023
• Recognised by Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators 2023
• Winner of Best Marketing Insights Platform in the MarTech Breakthrough Awards 2023 & 2024

Equal Opportunity

Zappi is an equal opportunity employer; our diversity is a major strength. We are committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce fosters innovation, creativity, and success. Our hiring decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, and abilities, ensuring fairness and equity throughout our recruitment process. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply. Join our team and contribute to an inclusive environment where everyone's unique perspectives and talents are valued and respected.