Own the AI Stack: Architect LLMs in Production

AES Global; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

AES Global in Cape Town is seeking a hands‑on AI architect to own the end‑to‑end AI stack from prototype to production. You will translate prototypes into production features, balancing model choice, prompts, and tooling with a focus on safety and maintainability.

You will mentor peers, design robust APIs, and deliver platform features across TypeScript/JavaScript stacks while aligning with privacy and security requirements. This is a builder’s role with real impact.

Qualifications

• IT qualification or extensive hands‑on technical development experience.
• Proven track record shipping production software as a senior or lead full‑stack engineer.
• Deep, current expertise in JavaScript and TypeScript across the stack: Node.js server‑side and a modern front‑end framework.
• Hands‑on experience building on top of LLMs and foundation models — prompt engineering, retrieval‑augmented generation, tool‑use and function calling, agents, and evaluation.
• Solid understanding of the SDLC, API design, testing, debugging and production support.
• Understanding of scalability, high availability, application performance monitoring and cloud platforms.
• Strong application and data security knowledge, including careful handling of personal data and awareness of privacy regulation such as POPIA and GDPR.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and drive architectural design with stakeholders.
• Facilitation, training and leadership instincts to pull others into design and research phases.
• Sharp analytical thinking and a disciplined, deadline‑driven approach.

Responsibilities

• Take end‑to‑end ownership of the product AI stack, from prototype through to production.
• Design, build and ship AI‑powered features and services — agents, retrieval, tool‑use, orchestration and evaluation — as working software.
• Own model selection, prompt and agent design, context management, cost and latency trade‑offs, and the evaluation harness.
• Stand up AI platform primitives: model gateways, tracing and observability, evaluation and regression suites, safe rollout mechanisms.
• Establish patterns, guardrails and reusable building blocks for the wider team to add AI capabilities safely.
• Deliver production features across the full stack, TypeScript and JavaScript front to back, integrating AI capabilities into the platform.
• Write, review and merge production code regularly — raise the engineering bar through the code you ship.
• Build robust APIs and services that expose AI capabilities to product teams with clear contracts, versioning and compatibility.
• Focus on security, privacy, and maintainability from the start; ensure privacy‑aware handling of personal data.
• Mentor and uplift engineers through pairing, code reviews, and hands‑on guidance across the stack.

Skills

JavaScript/TypeScript

Node.js

Front-end framework

LLMs & foundation models

API design

Cloud platforms

Security & privacy

Education

IT qualification

Tools

Claude API

Claude Agent SDK

.NET / C#

SQL Server

OpenTelemetry

Job description

AES Global in Cape Town is seeking a hands‑on AI architect to own the end‑to‑end AI stack from prototype to production. You will translate prototypes into production features, balancing model choice, prompts, and tooling with a focus on safety and maintainability.

You will mentor peers, design robust APIs, and deliver platform features across TypeScript/JavaScript stacks while aligning with privacy and security requirements. This is a builder’s role with real impact.