Software Engineer

OfferZen; Cape Town; Remote; ZAR 850,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

OfferZen is helping a Cape Town-based tech team scale an analytics platform that ingests data from diverse APIs. You will own the data ingestion layer, design robust pipelines, and collaborate with ML engineers and platform teams to deliver reliable, scalable data processing systems.

You will write production Python services, work with TypeScript orchestration, and apply best practices for data quality, schema design, and API integration.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain production Python services that connect to third-party external APIs, managing authentication, pagination, rate limits, retries, and historical backfills.
• Design and operate code-first data pipelines that transform and stage data for downstream analytics, predictive models, and customer-facing interfaces.
• Collaborate on pipeline orchestration built in TypeScript to give stakeholders real-time visibility into pipeline execution.
• Build automated validation, alerting, and data quality monitors to catch schema shifts and discrepancies quickly.
• Work with external technical teams on custom API integrations and data edge cases.
• Scope, estimate, and ship reliable software end-to-end as an independent builder.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

SQL

Data pipelines

APIs

AI coding assistants

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Polars

Pandas

Docker

AWS

GCP

Job description

We are assisting our client, an early-stage, VC-backed analytics platform company with a distributed global team. They build high-performance data systems that help digital enterprises analyze marketing performance, forecast core business metrics, and optimize large-scale capital allocation.

Their engineering culture values autonomous execution, clean architecture, and pragmatic problem-solving without corporate bureaucracy.

The Role

You will take full ownership of the data ingestion layer: designing, building, and running the code-first pipelines that collect data from diverse external platforms and REST/GraphQL APIs, ensuring every record lands reliably and with high accuracy.

You will collaborate closely with machine learning engineers, product leads, platform developers, and client-side technical teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain production Python services that connect to third-party external APIs, managing authentication, pagination, rate limits, retries, and historical backfills.
• Design and operate code-first data pipelines that transform and stage data for downstream analytics, predictive models, and customer-facing interfaces.
• Collaborate on pipeline orchestration built in TypeScript to give stakeholders real-time visibility into pipeline execution.
• Build automated validation, alerting, and data quality monitors to catch schema shifts and discrepancies quickly.
• Work with external technical teams on custom API integrations and data edge cases.
• Scope, estimate, and ship reliable software end-to-end as an independent builder.

Candidate Requirements

• Location: Based in or around Cape Town (remote-first, with periodic local team meetups).
• Experience: 4+ years of professional software engineering experience writing production code, with Python as your primary daily language.

Must-Haves

• Strong, daily production proficiency in Python.
• Proven hands-on track record building and operating external API integrations in code.
• Solid experience creating code-first data pipelines (ingestion, transformation, and scheduling).
• Strong SQL and data modeling fundamentals, including a clear understanding of OLTP vs. OLAP database design.
• Working comfort with TypeScript, or the demonstrated ability to pick it up quickly.
• Sound API and schema design fundamentals.
• Practical experience using AI coding assistants in daily engineering workflows.

Bonus Points

• Hands-on work with cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake or BigQuery.
• Familiarity with data processing libraries like Polars or Pandas.
• Prior exposure to digital marketing platforms, attribution APIs, or ad-tech data feeds.
• Experience handling high-throughput or large-scale dataset ingestion.
• Practical containerisation (Docker) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP) experience.

Why Consider This Role?

• Early-Stage Impact: Join as a foundational engineer with real technical autonomy, shipping systems that run at high data volumes.
• Complex Data Challenges: Work directly on high-throughput data extraction, automated transformation, and custom integration architecture.
• Modern Engineering Standards: Operate in a collaborative, code-first engineering setup where quality and reliability matter.