Senior AI Backend Engineer & Platform Orchestration

Kaitlin Mornet; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 781,000 - 1,116,000; Full time

Job summary

Kaitlin Mornet in Johannesburg seeks a Senior Product Engineer to lead backend systems and AI-powered platform features for enterprise clients across WhatsApp, voice, webchat and email. You will own API design, integrations and cloud infrastructure, delivering scalable, reliable software while mentoring junior engineers.

Role focuses on building and deploying AI-driven agents, ensuring performance, security and business value, with collaboration across teams and client-facing technical scoping.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in backend engineering building 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 with 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 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 design through deployment, monitoring and improvement.
• Ensure system reliability, performance, security and uptime across production environments.
• Work with enterprise clients to scope technical requirements and define success criteria.
• Collaborate with internal teams to feed client insights back into product development.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

APIs

PostgreSQL

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

LLM

Event-driven

Mentoring

Job description

Kaitlin Mornet in Johannesburg seeks a Senior Product Engineer to lead backend systems and AI-powered platform features for enterprise clients across WhatsApp, voice, webchat and email. You will own API design, integrations and cloud infrastructure, delivering scalable, reliable software while mentoring junior engineers.

Role focuses on building and deploying AI-driven agents, ensuring performance, security and business value, with collaboration across teams and client-facing technical scoping.