Senior AI Backend Engineer for Enterprise Platform

Manpower Sa (Pty) Ltd; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Manpower Sa (Pty) Ltd based in Johannesburg is seeking a Senior Product Engineer to help build and scale an AI-powered platform used across WhatsApp, voice, webchat and email. You will own complex backend systems, architect integrations, mentor junior engineers and work directly with enterprise clients to translate needs into reliable, high-performance solutions.

This role combines hands-on coding with client collaboration, driving production-ready features and ensuring security, uptime and

Qualifications

• At least 5 years’ experience in backend engineering, building and maintaining production systems.
• Strong programming skills in Python or TypeScript (Node.js).
• Proven experience designing APIs and integrating third-party systems.
• Good knowledge of PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, including data modelling and query optimisation.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, logging and monitoring.
• Demonstrated experience building and deploying LLM-powered features or applications into production.
• Experience working with queues and event-driven architecture.
• Ability to explain technical concepts and trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Previous experience mentoring or leading junior engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain scalable backend systems, APIs and third-party integrations.
• Develop and optimise AI-powered applications and agent orchestration systems.
• Take ownership of features from initial design through to deployment, monitoring and ongoing improvement.
• Ensure system reliability, performance, security and uptime across production environments.
• Work with enterprise clients to scope technical requirements, define success criteria and support proof-of-concept projects.
• Translate client needs into practical technical solutions and communicate architectural decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Monitor deployed AI agents, evaluate their performance and report on business value and outcomes.
• Mentor junior implementation engineers and contribute to best practices across the engineering team.
• Collaborate with internal teams to feed client insights and technical learnings back into product development.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

APIs design

PostgreSQL

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

LLM in production

Event-driven

Mentoring

Job description

Manpower Sa (Pty) Ltd based in Johannesburg is seeking a Senior Product Engineer to help build and scale an AI-powered platform used across WhatsApp, voice, webchat and email. You will own complex backend systems, architect integrations, mentor junior engineers and work directly with enterprise clients to translate needs into reliable, high-performance solutions.

This role combines hands-on coding with client collaboration, driving production-ready features and ensuring security, uptime and