External: Senior AI Developer

Pype; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Pype in Cape Town is seeking a Senior AI Developer to build production AI systems in a regulated payments environment. This hands-on role requires shipping LLM-based solutions beyond simple prompts and applying AI across the delivery lifecycle.

You will design services in Python and .NET, build content embedding and retrieval pipelines for RAG, and implement agentic workflows with human-in-the-loop checkpoints. Observability, evals, and POPIA compliance are essential.

Qualifications

• Shipped production LLM systems end-to-end in a regulated domain.
• Experience building content embeddings and retrieval for RAG pipelines.
• Strong hands-on Python and .NET (C#) expertise in production systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build Python and .NET services that integrate with large language models.
• Set up evals and observability to monitor model quality and behaviour in production.
• Lead a small AI-focused team and deliver milestones with disciplined engineering.

Skills

Python

.NET (C#)

LLM systems

RAG pipelines

Observability

Tools

Claude Code

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Our client is a well-established South African fintech in the payments space, building AI into its products and operations.

About the role

We're looking for a Senior AI Developer to build production AI systems. This is a hands-on role for someone who has already shipped LLM-based systems beyond simple request and response, and who uses AI across the full delivery lifecycle with the discipline a regulated payments environment requires.

Key responsibilities

• Design and build services in Python and .NET that integrate with large language models
• Build content embedding and retrieval pipelines for RAG
• Design agentic journeys and long-running workflows, with human-in-the-loop checkpoints where decisions need oversight
• Set up evals to measure the quality and reliability of model output
• Add observability so agent behaviour can be traced and debugged in production
• Use AI tools across planning, coding, testing and release, and validate what they produce
• Structure work in phases, with clear deliverables at agreed milestones, and keep technical documentation up to date
• Apply security and financial-services data practices, including POPIA, as standard
• Has built and shipped at least one production LLM system end to end
• Strong, hands-on Python and .NET (C#) experience
• Practical experience with content embedding and RAG, beyond basic prompt-and-response integration
• Experience building agentic workflows with human-in-the-loop, evals and observability
• Productive daily use of AI development tools such as Claude Code or GitHub Copilot, with the judgement to check their output
• A track record of shipping safely and at pace in a disciplined engineering environment
• Experience leading a small technical team on an AI project is an advantage
• Experience in fintech, payments or other regulated environments is an advantage