Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack)

The Global Talent Co.; Cape Town; Remote; ZAR 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

The Global Talent Co. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack) to own features end-to-end across frontend, backend, infrastructure and the AI pipeline.

You will work closely with founders and grant-writing teams in a remote setting, with a small, fast-moving engineering group and no mid-level designer or product manager. This role suits a senior engineer who ships quickly and communicates trade-offs clearly.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in a senior engineering role with ownership of products or major features end-to-end
• Startup or scale-up experience taking unclear problems and shipping solutions quickly
• Proficient in TypeScript/Node.js frontend and backend, plus PostgreSQL depth and migrations

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end from discovery to production
• Turn ambiguous problems into clear technical plans and ship quickly
• Advance AI pipeline with prompt engineering, context management and multi-provider setup
• Build and own AI evaluation: prompt quality, model selection and regression detection
• Operate, monitor and debug live production (Sentry, CloudWatch, Postgres)
• Shape code quality, technical roadmap and engineering standards
• Build user-friendly interfaces that truly help grant writers
• Shorten project start-to-finish time via automation and reliability

Skills

End-to-end ownership

Startup/scale-up experience

English communication

Senior engineering

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

Next.js

React Query

Express

BullMQ

PostgreSQL

AWS

Terraform

Anthropic/OpenAI APIs

Sentry

CloudWatch

Claude Code / Cursor

Job description

Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack)
Full-time (40 hours per week), Remote

About the Company

You will be joining an early-stage, AI-native German start-up building the digital infrastructure for grant funding. Its platform combines AI-supported research, matching and application drafting with expert review, so that non-profits and public organisations can spend their energy on their projects instead of on funding logic, forms and admin. The engineering team is small and the product already has real customer demand, so this hire will shape how both the product and the engineering function are built from here.

The Role

As a Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack), you will own product and technical problems end-to-end, from the first conversation with the grant team through to production, across the frontend, backend, infrastructure and the AI pipeline at the core of the platform. This is one of the company’s first engineering hires: not everything is defined yet, and that is intentional. When you see a better solution, you are expected to build it, not wait for a ticket.

You will work directly with the founders and closely with the grant-writing team, with no designers or product managers in between. This role suits a senior engineer who has done this before in a start-up or scale-up: someone who can take an unclear business problem, turn it into a plan, ship a first version quickly, and explain the trade-offs clearly to non-technical colleagues.

Key Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end, including the user interface, from discovery with the grant team through to production
• Turn ambiguous business problems into clear technical plans, ship a first version quickly, then iterate
• Advance the AI pipeline through prompt engineering, context management, cost control and a multi-provider setup (AWS Bedrock, Anthropic, OpenAI)
• Build and own the AI evaluation practice: prompt quality, model selection and regression detection
• Operate, monitor and debug the live production environment (Sentry, CloudWatch, Postgres performance)
• Make architecture decisions and shape code quality, engineering standards and the technical roadmap
• Build interfaces with a usability-first mindset so the product genuinely works for grant writers
• Shorten the time from starting a new project to a finished, submitted application through features, reliability and automation

Ideal Candidate

• 2+ years working in a senior engineering role (not only total experience), with a track record of owning products or major features end-to-end
• Start-up or scale-up experience: you have taken an unclear business problem with no real spec and shipped a working solution quickly
• Several years of professional experience with TypeScript and Node.js, plus solid Postgres depth (JSONB, query performance, migrations)
• Confident across the full stack: Next.js / React Query on the frontend, Express and BullMQ on the backend, AWS (ECS, RDS) for infrastructure
• Hands-on experience building and running AI pipelines in production, beyond simply calling an API
• AI-native way of working: tools such as Claude Code or Cursor are part of your daily workflow
• Clear written and spoken English; you can explain a technical trade-off to a non-technical founder in a few sentences
• High ownership: you close problems yourself, bring proposals rather than diagnoses, and work well without detailed direction

Nice to Have

• German at B1 level or above (a plus, not a requirement; the team works bilingually)
• Experience with AI agents and tool-calling workflows in production
• Experience with Terraform

Tools & Stack

TypeScript, Node.js, Next.js 15, React Query, Express, BullMQ, PostgreSQL, AWS (ECS, RDS, Bedrock), Terraform, Anthropic and OpenAI APIs, Sentry, CloudWatch, Claude Code / Cursor

At The Global Talent Co., our mission is to bridge the gap between leading global tech companies and amazing global talent. We believe everyone deserves equal access to opportunities, regardless of the country they happen to be born in.