Senior AI Systems Engineer — Hybrid, Production Backend

e-Merge IT Recruitment; South Africa; Hybrid; ZAR 810,000 - 990,000; Full time

Job summary

E-Merge is seeking a Senior AI Software Engineer to design, build, and scale production-grade AI-enabled software systems. You will work with engineering leadership, platform teams, and security stakeholders to deliver reliable, observable software at enterprise scale in a hybrid Midrand setting.

Responsibilities span backend services, API design, and end-to-end delivery of AI-enabled applications, with a focus on security, observability, and CI/CD practices.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, at Senior/Staff/Principal level.
• Shipping production systems that other engineers rely on.
• Deep proficiency in one or more modern backend languages and AI integrations.
• Experience with security, observability, and CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and AI-enabled apps.
• Develop secure, observable, and production-ready distributed systems.
• Contribute across architecture, implementation, code review, testing, and ops readiness.
• Design and evolve APIs, integrations, and message-driven workflows.
• Collaborate with platform, infra, security, and engineering teams for reliability.
• Drive engineering best practices: CI/CD, testing automation, observability, security, releases.
• Mentor engineers and participate in technical design discussions.
• Translate complex AI decisions into clear documentation for stakeholders.
• Support continuous improvement in quality, reliability, and delivery processes.

Skills

Python

TypeScript / Node.js

Java

Go

AI/ML platform integration

LLM application development

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Vector databases

Kubernetes / Docker

Cloud platforms (AWS preferred)

Terraform / Infrastructure-as-Code

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Terraform

Job description

E-Merge is seeking a Senior AI Software Engineer to design, build, and scale production-grade AI-enabled software systems. You will work with engineering leadership, platform teams, and security stakeholders to deliver reliable, observable software at enterprise scale in a hybrid Midrand setting.

Responsibilities span backend services, API design, and end-to-end delivery of AI-enabled applications, with a focus on security, observability, and CI/CD practices.