Senior Python Engineer: Data & AI-First Platform

Tillo; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Working (3 days in office)

Health insurance contribution

Learning & Development budget

Top spec equipment

Team breakfasts and events

Job summary

Tillo is seeking a Senior Python Engineer to join our Data team in Cape Town. You will build and evolve Python services connected to our data platform, supporting payments, billing, and reporting. You’ll work with Data Engineers and BI Analysts to ensure data reliability, structure, and accessibility for analytics.

You’ll champion an AI-first approach, contribute to DevOps, and mentor engineers while collaborating across Engineering, Data, BI, and Product teams in a hybrid environment.

Qualifications

• Expert-level experience developing web applications and services with Python and FastAPI.
• Strong experience designing microservice architectures and complex system integrations.
• Strong understanding of how application data is structured, exposed, and delivered into data warehouses or search platforms.
• Comfortable writing and reasoning about SQL.
• Ability to work closely with Data Engineers and BI Analysts on data modelling, schema, and data quality decisions.
• Strong understanding of secure software development principles.
• Strong experience with automated testing and test-driven development.
• Experience integrating with third-party services and APIs.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and leading technical discussions.
• Ability to work collaboratively across engineering and data disciplines.
• Comfortable working in a modern Agile engineering environment.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain Python services using FastAPI, Podman, Kubernetes, and serverless platforms.
• Own and improve existing services supporting payments, billing, and reporting.
• Work with our Snowflake data platform to ensure data is reliably exposed for reporting and analytics.
• Collaborate with Data Engineers to define data structures and delivery into Snowflake/OpenSearch.
• Partner with BI Analysts to translate reporting needs into reliable data outputs.
• Design and maintain microservices and integrations with third-party APIs.
• Contribute to DevOps activities including Helm charts and container configurations.
• Maintain high code quality through testing, reviews and documentation.
• Introduce automated tests and test-driven development.
• Pair program with engineers and contribute to technical discussions.
• Champion AI-first engineering with AI/agentic workflows.
• Mentor engineers and develop engineering standards.

Skills

Python & FastAPI

Microservices design

SQL

Data modelling

Security best practices

Automated testing

Mentoring engineers

Agile methodologies

Cross-team collaboration

APIs integration

Tools

Snowflake

Airflow

dbt

Kubernetes

Podman

Docker

OpenSearch

GitHub Actions

CircleCI

Job description

Tillo is seeking a Senior Python Engineer to join our Data team in Cape Town. You will build and evolve Python services connected to our data platform, supporting payments, billing, and reporting. You’ll work with Data Engineers and BI Analysts to ensure data reliability, structure, and accessibility for analytics.

You’ll champion an AI-first approach, contribute to DevOps, and mentor engineers while collaborating across Engineering, Data, BI, and Product teams in a hybrid environment.