Senior Development Engineer (Data)

anyvan; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 892,800 - 1,339,200; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Salary

Generous Time Off

Health & Wellbeing support

Daily Perks like in-house coffee

Opportunities for Career Growth

Job summary

AnyVan in Cape Town is seeking a Senior Engineer to enhance its logistics technology platform. The selected engineer will tackle data and backend challenges to optimize job allocations while embedding AI systems in production.

This role requires strong backend skills, experience in a fast-moving environment, and the ability to collaborate across teams. AnyVan offers competitive salaries, generous time off, and a supportive company culture.

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineering skills (Go, Java, Python or similar).
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and performance.
• Experience in a fast-paced product environment.

Responsibilities

• Designing and operating production-grade systems that scale.
• Tackling backend engineering challenges in AI/ML.
• Collaborating with stakeholders to shape solutions.

Skills

Backend engineering skills

Distributed systems understanding

Experience with CI/CD

Problem-solving skills

Collaboration mindset

Tools

Python

Go

AWS

Job description

Got Drive? Join AnyVan as we make moving anything, anywhere miles better and build a career that moves just as fast.

Back in 2009, our CEO Angus saw half-empty vans everywhere and knew there had to be a better way! That's how AnyVan began. He set out to create the world's most efficient logistics technology and help halve the number of wasted miles by filling those empty vans.

Since then we've become the nation's favourite way to move, with over 150k five-star reviews and 5 million customers in the UK and Europe. Our team of 400 AnyVanners across London, Cape Town and Bogota is proving that moving doesn't have to cost the earth by helping save 8,520 tonnes of Carbon each year.

Build systems that move the real world, with AI at the core

At AnyVan, we're building one of the most sophisticated logistics optimisation platforms in Europe. We connect customer demand with real-time driver availability, using intelligent matching, dynamic pricing, and AI to deliver a world-class service at market-beating prices.

By routing jobs to vans already on the road, we reduce wasted miles, cut emissions, and ensure drivers earn fairly. It's logistics, pricing, and marketplace dynamics, driven by software and increasingly by machine intelligence.

We're looking for a senior engineer to work with our Allocations team. This is more focused on data and back end engineering problems relating to how our transport partners can access and get booked and allocated against the right jobs. This role will focus on the data, platforms and tools that enables that to happen.

And we're moving fast.

We're embedding AI and machine learning across our core platform, not as experiments, but as production systems that drive real business outcomes:

• Real-time, intelligent pricing that models true job-level costs and responds dynamically to supply, demand, and market conditions

• Predictive demand and routing models that forecast driver availability and optimise job allocation before a customer even books

• LLM-powered tooling across our internal and customer-facing products, from intelligent quoting to driver workflow automation

• A two-sided marketplace where drivers can buy and sell jobs to maximise utilisation — powered by smart matching algorithms

This is genuinely leading-edge work: production AI systems, at scale, on problems that matter.

How our engineering teams deliver

We're product-led and agile. Most teams run Scrum with two-week sprints, but we care far more about outcomes than rituals. Engineers are trusted to challenge assumptions, adapt processes, and ship things that matter.

Senior engineers here are not heads-down implementers. You'll:

• Work closely with product, data, and commercial stakeholders

• Influence technical direction and architectural decisions

• Balance speed with long-term sustainability

• Regularly ship meaningful improvements to production

Our technology

We're pragmatic and cloud-first, running on AWS, with the flexibility to choose the right tool for the job:

• Exploring: Go, Rust, React, Node.js

• Core stack: Python, Vue.js & Nuxt, TypeScript

• Legacy (retiring where we can): Java, PHP, Angular

You don't need experience in everything, we value strong fundamentals and good engineering judgement over keyword matching.

What you'll be doing

• Designing, building, and operating production-grade systems that scale

• Tackling complex technical challenges across backend, infrastructure, data flows, and AI/ML pipelines

• Writing clean, pragmatic, well-tested code with long-term maintainability in mind

• Collaborating with technical and non-technical stakeholders to shape solutions

• Championing testing, observability, and quality improvements

• Mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across the team

You'll thrive here if you have

• Experience in a scale-up or fast-growing product environment

• Strong backend engineering skills (Go, Java, Python, or similar)

• A solid understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and performance

• Experience with CI/CD, modern deployment practices, and cloud infrastructure

• Comfort working with ambiguity and evolving requirements

• A bias toward action — shipping value quickly, then iterating

• A collaborative mindset and the ability to influence beyond your code

• Bonus: exposure to AI/ML systems, marketplaces, logistics, pricing, or e-commerce

Location and Eligibility

• Cape Town -based, able to commute to the Central Business District

• Happy to be onsite at least 3 days per week

• Fully eligible to work in South Africa

What We Offer

• Competitive Salary – Highly competitive salaries
• Generous Time Off – 20 days + public holidays and Christmas Eve on us
• Health & Wellbeing – ZAR1000 per month towards cover with Momentum/Discovery
• Future Ready – 5% you, 5% us
• Easy Travel – Free parking or transport home after 7pm
• Daily Perks – In-house barista coffee, free breakfast every day
• Culture & Community – Weekly drinks, fun socials, and rewards that take you places (literally - last winners hit the Alps)
• Career Growth – Join a disruptive technology leader and fast forward your career move

Our company values are:

• Have fun, get it done
• Progress over perfection
• One team thinking big

You can find out more about our culture here:

DE&I

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace where every voice is heard, every perspective is valued, and every individual has the opportunity to thrive. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds to be part of our mission and contribute to our vibrant culture.