Full Stack Software Engineer

Duku AI; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 800,000; Full time

Job summary

Duku AI, located in Johannesburg, is looking for a Full Stack Software Engineer to play a pivotal role in building the trust layer of AI. This role emphasizes high school of turnaround, deploying daily and collaborating closely with founders to shape product direction.

We are not seeking someone to simply maintain a codebase; we want a visionary who can turn prototypes into production and adapt rapidly to changing demands. If you are driven and thrive in a startup environment, we want to hear from you.

Qualifications

• Ability to design LLM-powered testers that adapt in real time.
• Experience in deploying software in a high-velocity environment.
• Strong understanding of Python, TypeScript, and cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Ship fast, deploying code daily to improve rapidly.
• Collaborate with founders to define product direction based on user feedback.
• Own the entire stack, from commit to production, ensuring flawless deployments.

Skills

Fluency with AI/LLMs

Product obsession

Relentless drive

Startup scar tissue

Job description

Most engineering roles build software nobody fully trusts. This one builds the trust layer itself. AI is making engineers dramatically more productive. The problem is nobody fully trusts what AI ships.

Why this matters now

AI is rewriting how software gets built. But shipping still breaks on testing. Engineering leaders are desperate to release faster without dropping quality, and they can't get there with manual QA or brittle test automation.

Here's the bigger shift: as AI writes more of the code, the bottleneck moves from generating software to trusting it. Nobody owns that trust layer yet. Duku is building it, autonomous agents that simulate real users, catch critical failures before production, and self-heal as the product evolves.

Backed by experienced operators and investors, we're building what we believe will become a core layer of the modern software stack. We're looking for an exceptional Full Stack Software Engineer to help build it. Not someone to maintain a codebase. Someone to define one.

What You’ll Do

• Ship fast, learn faster : We deploy daily, not monthly
• Talk to users, shape the roadmap : Sit in the trenches with founders on calls that define what we build
• Train AI agents: Design LLM-powered testers that explore, learn, and adapt in real time
• Own the stack :Python, TypeScript, cloud infra, from commit to production
• Turn prototypes into production : Run real experiments on models, embeddings, and retrieval pipelines

What We’re Looking For

• Relentless drive: You execute fast, adapt faster
• Startup scar tissue : You’ve shipped product with no safety net
• Fluency with AI/LLMs : LangChain, vector stores, prompt engineering
• Product obsession : You care more about outcomes than outputs

Ideal Background

There's no perfect pedigree. We hire for mindset, not credentials. That said, you might have:

• Shipped AI features in prod
• Built something from 0 to 1
• Thrived in chaos with high ownership

Why This Matters

Software is accelerating. QA hasn't kept up. Autonomous testing is inevitable, and we're building it.

Five years from now, every high-velocity team will rely on AI agents like ours to ship faster, safer, and smarter.

Join now, and help make that future real, before someone else does.