Remote Senior Backend Engineer - Microservices South Africa

Placements24; Benoni; Hybrid; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full remote work flexibility

Health insurance

Retirement plan

Professional development budget

Career growth opportunities

Team-building activities

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a highly experienced Senior Backend Engineer to join a remote-first engineering team in South Africa. You will design, build, and scale microservices, focusing on robust APIs, data models, and scalable databases.

You will collaborate with frontend, product, and other stakeholders to deliver high-performance software. The role emphasizes distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), Docker and Kubernetes, and modern languages (Java, Python, Go, Node.js).

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional backend development experience with microservices.
• Expertise in one or more backend languages (Java, Python, Go, C#, Node.js).
• Experience designing RESTful APIs and microservices.
• Strong knowledge of relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra) databases.
• Experience with message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Familiarity with Docker and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Proficiency with Git and remote collaboration in distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy scalable microservices.
• Write clean, well-documented code in backend languages.
• Design and optimize database schemas for performance and scalability.
• Develop and maintain robust APIs for internal and external use.
• Implement and manage messaging queues and event-driven architectures.
• Ensure reliability, performance, and security of backend systems.
• Collaborate with frontend teams to integrate services with applications.
• Participate in code reviews, architectural discussions, and design sessions.
• Mentor junior backend engineers and promote best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues.

Skills

Backend development

Microservices

RESTful APIs

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Kafka

Git

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a highly experienced Senior Backend Engineer to join a remote-first engineering team in South Africa. You will design, build, and scale microservices, focusing on robust APIs, data models, and scalable databases.

You will collaborate with frontend, product, and other stakeholders to deliver high-performance software. The role emphasizes distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), Docker and Kubernetes, and modern languages (Java, Python, Go, Node.js).