Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Platform (Cape Town) Full-time, on a contractor agreement · Cape Town hybrid (Riverlands office)

IO-Sphere Limited; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 837,000 - 1,004,000; Full time

Job summary

IO-Sphere Limited seeks a full-time contractor engineer in Cape Town to own the foundation of our platform, including authentication, audits, deployment, and backup systems. You will integrate Claude Code tooling, secure access, and scalable product-ready components for multiple customers.

You’ll report to Jen and collaborate across the team while helping prepare for ISO 27001 and other security standards. The role blends remote work with in-office training days in Riverlands.

Qualifications

• Experience building production web apps in a fast-moving startup.
• Knowledge of authentication, authorization, audit logs, CI/CD and incident response.
• Familiarity with ISO 27001, SOC 2 or Cyber Essentials is a plus.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Google Cloud) and data security best practices.

Responsibilities

• Own the foundation layer: sign-in, data access, audit trail, testing, deployment, monitoring, backups.
• Make it easy for others to build features securely on top of the foundation.
• Help product teams turn academy and compliance tools into scalable customer products.
• Contribute to security reviews and compliance readiness like Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

Auth & access control

Audit logs & security

CI/CD & deployments

Cloud (Google Cloud)

ISO 27001 / SOC 2 familiarity

UK GDPR / POPIA knowledge

Tools

Next.js

TypeScript

Postgres

Claude Code

Google Cloud

Job description

• Type: Full-time, on a contractor agreement You'd work 9:00 to 17:30 SAST and get 20 days' paid leave plus South African public holidays, the same as our employed staff. We don't have a South African company, so this isn't PAYE. Nothing is deducted and you pay your own tax as a provisional taxpayer.
• Location: Cape Town hybrid (Riverlands office) Mainly remote, with office days in Riverlands for training and team working, so you need to live in or near Cape Town.
• Pay: R75,000 to R90,000 a month (cost to company, before tax), depending on experience
• Start: As soon as possible
• Eligibility: The right to work in South Africa (we can't offer visa sponsorship). Two references, one from your most recent employer. A SAPS police clearance certificate with digital fingerprints, apostilled, which we arrange and pay for. A criminal record doesn't automatically stop you being considered. Safeguarding and Prevent training, which we give you when you join.

You build with Claude Code every day and you've seen how fast it lets people ship. You're also the one who asks who can see the data, and what we'd show an auditor.

You'd be our first full-time engineer, owning the platform the rest of us build on, from Cape Town. You'd report to Jen, who leads our curriculum and our learning academy and was a data engineer before that.

What you'd do

We build our own software for almost everything we do, from the academy our learners use to our compliance, hiring and sales tools. Most of it is built with Claude by people who aren't engineers by background. That's how we move fast. It only works if someone makes it safe, and that's the job.

You'd own the foundation everything runs on, which means how people sign in and what they can see, the audit trail, testing, deployment, monitoring and backups, and the checks that catch a problem before it reaches a learner's record. Then you'd make it easy for the rest of us to build features on top of it securely, using the same AI tools you use.

The foundation comes first. After that, some of what we've built is good enough that other organisations want it, and you'd turn our academy and our compliance platform into products we can sell, running them for many customers at once and passing the security reviews those customers will ask for. You'd also build more of the systems we run our apprenticeships on, like tracking learners' progress and reviews.

Your week

• Building and running the shared foundation our apps sit on.
• Moving our existing apps onto it, starting with the ones that hold the most sensitive data.
• Reviewing what the team builds with Claude, and turning what you find into checks and Claude Code skills so the same mistake doesn't come back.
• Pairing with colleagues who are building their own tools and showing them how to do it safely.
• Getting the academy and our compliance platform ready for other organisations to buy, with each customer's data kept separate and answers ready for their security questions.
• Keeping our engineering ready for Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001, and leading the fix when something goes wrong.

We work in Next.js, TypeScript and Postgres on Google Cloud, with Claude at the centre of how we build. Cape Town is one or two hours ahead of the UK, so you'd overlap with the team for most of the day. We're a startup, so there'll be other things to pick up as we grow, and we'd expect you to help where it's needed.

Why you'd want it

You'd set how we do engineering here and build the platform our products run on. Lots of companies are about to have people who aren't engineers shipping software with AI, and you'd be working out how to make that secure and auditable while it's still new.

We're a startup at an inflection point, and 2027 is when we scale. The platform is a big part of how we get there, and if you see a better way to build it, we'll actually do it.

Who you are

You're a full-stack engineer who has built and run production web apps for several years, ideally in TypeScript. You've owned auth, permissions, audit logs, CI and deployment, backups and incidents, and you care about getting them right. Claude Code or a tool like it is how you work now, and you could show us something you've built with it and the guardrails you put round it. You like startups, and you're comfortable in a fast-moving environment where you work out the problem as well as the answer. You can explain a security risk to someone who isn't an engineer without making them feel stupid, and you'd enjoy helping them build.

It helps a lot if you've built software that other businesses buy, with many customers on one platform, or if you've worked towards ISO 27001, SOC 2 or Cyber Essentials. UK GDPR or POPIA, Google Cloud, or software for education help too.

You'll need to write clearly, because the answers to customers' security questionnaires and the team's guidance on building safely would be yours to write. The office is in Riverlands and you'd be in it some days, so you need to be in or near Cape Town.

About iO-Sphere

We train people in data and AI by having them do the work. Over 1,000 people have trained with us, and companies including PwC, BAE Systems, Dunelm, Motorway and CBRE send their teams to us. We're one of the UK's fastest-growing data and AI training companies, and a small, tight-knit team that takes ownership, sets a high bar and has a lot of fun.

How we hire

1. Screening call (about 30 minutes). With our Recruitment and People Ops Lead, on your background and motivation, including our safeguarding questions.
2. Behavioural interview. A conversation with the team you'd work with about how you've handled real situations at work.
3. Case study. Our work sample: a short case study drawn from real work, which you talk us through.
4. Final call. An interview with our Managing Director about why you want to join us, how you like to work, and whether we are the right fit for each other.

iO-Sphere is committed to safeguarding and operates within regulated Further Education environments. This role requires an apostilled police clearance certificate, and safeguarding and Prevent training. All applicants must complete their application honestly and in full, and consent to the pre-employment checks required for the role. Failure to disclose relevant information, or providing false information, will result in the application being withdrawn or employment being terminated.