Senior AI Engineer (Agents)

MoMo from MTN; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

MTN Group Fintech is building a world-class AI capability from the ground up, powering the next generation of financial services across markets. This Senior AI Engineer (Agents) role turns prioritized use cases into reliable agents and automations that operate within enterprise systems.

You will write code, test behaviour, integrate tools, and provide production support in a hands-on capacity. The role reports to architects and works in delivery squads.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science or a related technical field.
• Minimum of 5 to 7 years in software engineering with production delivery.
• Hands-on experience with large language models, prompt/context engineering, tool/function calling and retrieval.
• Experience with agent frameworks, workflow orchestration or automation platforms.
• Strong programming ability with Python and at least one other language used in production services.
• Experience integrating with enterprise APIs and transactional systems, including handling failures and rate limits.
• Experience with version control, testing, CI/CD and code review practices.
• Exposure to production support, monitoring and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production agents against approved use cases.
• Tool and system integration with connectors and Model Context Protocol servers.
• Agent testing, evaluation and behavioural quality.
• Operational support of the agents and automations delivered.

Skills

LLM development

Python

Context engineering

API integration

CI/CD

Testing & debugging

Incident response

Version control

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering/IT/Data Science or related

Tools

Agent frameworks

Workflow orchestration

Automation platforms

Job description

MTN Group Fintech is building a world-class AI capability from the ground up, creating the platforms, agents, and intelligent systems that will power the next generation of financial services across multiple markets. This is a rare opportunity to join a newly established AI squad at the start of its journey and help define how AI transforms customer experiences, operations, growth, risk management, and productivity across one of Africa's largest fintech ecosystems.

The Senior AI Engineer (Agents) builds the production agents, workflows and automations that Group Fintech uses in its day-to-day operations. The role turns prioritised use cases into working, reliable and reusable agents that act on enterprise systems within defined limits.

This is a hands-on build role. The engineer writes the code, integrates the tools, tests the behaviour and supports what they have built in production. The role does not manage vendors, consultants or delivery partners.

As part of your portfolio as Senior AI Engineer (Agents), you will be accountable for:

• Design and build of production agents against approved use cases
• Tool and system integration, including connectors and Model Context Protocol servers
• Agent testing, evaluation and behavioural quality
• Operational support of the agents and automations they deliver

The engineer works to the agent patterns, standards and safety requirements set by the Agentic & MCP Architect and the Enterprise AI Architect, applies judgement in choosing among approved approaches, and escalates where a use case requires a new pattern, a design exception or a change in scope.

The role is deployed into business-owned delivery squads where the product is being built. The squad lead owns the business outcome; this role owns the quality and reliability of what it builds.

The incumbent must have the following:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science or a related technical field.
• Minimum of 5 to 7 years in software engineering, with demonstrated delivery of systems into production.
• Hands-on experience building with large language models, including prompt and context engineering, tool or function calling and retrieval.
• Practical experience with agent frameworks, workflow orchestration or automation platforms.
• Strong programming ability, with Python and at least one other language commonly used in production services.
• Experience integrating with enterprise APIs and transactional systems, including handling of failure and rate limiting.
• Experience with version control, testing, continuous integration and delivery, and code review practice.
• Exposure to production support, monitoring and incident response.

What will give an edge to your application:

• Relevant technical certification in cloud, software engineering or AI.
• Financial services, fintech or another high-volume transactional environment.

Closing date: 01 October 2026. Late applications will not be accepted.

Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks of closing date, please consider your application unsuccessful