Senior LLM Engineer (Remote, Polokwane)

Blacksmith Agency LLC; Polokwane; Remote; ZAR 800,000 - 1,100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Job summary

Blacksmith Agency LLC is seeking a Senior LLM Engineer to own and ship our internal automation roadmap. This builder role focuses on production LLM and agent systems used daily by the team. You will not train models and must have shipped an LLM system to production.

The role requires hands-on experience with Python or TypeScript/Node.js, REST APIs, and cloud deployment, plus the ability to discuss technical decisions on live calls with a US team. This is a full-time remote position.

Qualifications

• 2+ years building production software in Python or TypeScript / Node.js.
• At least one LLM or agent system you built yourself that ran in production with real users.
• Hands-on tool use, evals and failure handling: validating model output, retries, human approval.
• REST APIs, webhooks and cloud deployment.
• Strong spoken English and ability to discuss technical decisions on live calls with a US team.

Responsibilities

• Build agents and workflows with tool use and function calling on Anthropic and OpenAI, via a framework or APIs.
• Develop evals proving improvements and guardrails to prevent unsafe actions.
• Create integrations with WordPress, Figma, Google Workspace, Slack and internal MCP servers.
• Develop internal tools that reduce hours spent on delivery, sales ops and project management.

Skills

English fluency

Tools

Python

TypeScript/Node.js

Job description

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is building AI into every part of how we work. As Senior LLM Engineer at Blacksmith, you own and ship our internal automation roadmap: production LLM and agent systems that real people on our team use every day. This is a builder role, not research. You will not train models.

Blacksmith Agency

• Engineering
• Full time, your only job
• Remote (Latin America and South Africa)

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is building AI into every part of how we work. As Senior LLM Engineer at Blacksmith, you own and ship our internal automation roadmap: production LLM and agent systems that real people on our team use every day. This is a builder role, not research. You will not train models.

We hire engineers who have already shipped an LLM system to production and can walk us through it in detail: what it did, how it was built, what broke and what they changed. This is a full-time seat and it has to be your only job.

What You Will Build

• Agents and workflows with tool use and function calling on Anthropic and OpenAI, with a framework or plain APIs.
• Evals that prove a change made things better, and guardrails that stop a model taking a wrong or unsafe action.
• Integrations connecting WordPress, Figma, Google Workspace, Slack and our internal systems, including MCP servers.
• Internal tools that take measurable hours off delivery, sales operations and project management.

What You Bring

• 2+ years building production software in Python or TypeScript / Node.js.
• At least one LLM or agent system you built yourself that ran in production with real users.
• Hands-on tool use, evals and failure handling: validating model output, retries, human approval.
• REST APIs, webhooks and cloud deployment.
• Strong spoken English. You will talk through technical decisions on live calls with a US team.

Not a fit if

• You freelance or contract for other clients and would keep them alongside this job.
• Your LLM work is demos, tutorials or chat prompting, or your focus is model training and research.