Software Engineer (Web SDK)

Storyteller; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 630,000 - 770,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Up to ZAR 700,000 salary

33 Days Paid Leave

Benefits

Job summary

A high-growth SaaS company is looking for engineers to develop a Web SDK that empowers clients to integrate Stories into their products. This fully remote role in South Africa requires a proactive mindset, familiarity with APIs and performance tuning, and a keen interest in leveraging AI for development. Key responsibilities include building features, improving developer experience, and solving customer problems. Ideal candidates enjoy collaboration and understand the impact of their work on other developers.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with APIs/HTTP, performance tuning, and SQL/NoSQL basics.
• A proactive mindset – you look ahead and propose solutions.
• Strong written and verbal communication for remote collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end: understand the problem, design a simple solution, and build it.
• Work with Product to understand real customer use-cases and constraints.
• Propose simple solutions instead of over-engineering.

Skills

APIs/HTTP

Performance tuning

SQL/NoSQL basics

Proactive mindset

AI-native working style

Strong written and verbal communication

Reliability

Job description

Direct message the job poster from Storyteller

🇿🇦 Up to ZAR 700,000 salary on a full time, permanent employment contract

🌎 Fully remote working anywhere in South Africa!

🏖️ 33 Days Paid Leave and Benefits

✨ High-growth SaaS product trusted by major global sports brands

💻 Modern stack, great tooling, AI-first engineering culture

We’re looking for engineers who take initiative, spot opportunities, and move ideas forward proactively. Builders who are excited to use AI as a core part of how they work, think from first principles, and keep things simple – not people who just want to hand-craft every line of code.

You’ll be hands‑on in the Web SDK and backend services that support it, working on real features used by major sports and media organisations, and using AI heavily to design, build and refine solutions.

About Us

Storyteller is a high‑growth B2B SaaS platform that lets companies integrate Stories into their own apps and websites. Popularised by Instagram and Snapchat, Stories boost engagement, retention and revenue for our clients.

Our platform includes SDKs for Web, iOS and Android, publishing tools, analytics and ad support – giving enterprises a complete Stories solution in days. We work with globally recognised sports and media brands, and you’ll see your work used live by millions.

About the Role

You’ll join the team responsible for our Web SDK and the services it talks to. The SDK is how customers embed fast, beautiful, interactive Stories experiences into their own products, so integration quality, performance and developer experience really matter.

This is a hands‑on coding role, but not a “shut the door and code in isolation” one:

• You’ll use AI tools by default to explore, scaffold and refactor.
• You’ll think in terms of problems, constraints and outcomes, not just tickets.
• You’ll care about how easy we are to integrate with as much as how elegant the code looks.

You won’t be managing people or owning a team – but you will be expected to own your work end‑to‑end, contribute to how we solve problems, and help us keep raising the bar.

Responsibilities

Build and ship features

• Own features end‑to‑end: understand the problem, design a simple solution, build it (often with AI assistance), test it, and refine based on feedback.
• Improve performance, reliability and developer ergonomics of the Web SDK and supporting services.

Solve real customer problems

• Work with Product and Delivery to understand real customer use‑cases and constraints.
• Propose simple, pragmatic solutions instead of over‑engineering.
• Help streamline the integration experience so partners can get to “ story live” quickly and safely.
• Enhance documentation, code examples, and integration guides, often using AI to draft and then editing for clarity.
• Identify friction points for integrators and proactively champion improvements.
• Make small, continuous DX improvements (tooling, scripts, templates) rather than waiting for a big “clean‑up project”.
• Use AI tools by default for exploration, scaffolding and refactors – and then verify outputs with tests, types, and your own judgement.
• Use first‑principles thinking to cut through complexity: start from the goal and constraints, choose the simplest thing that works, and be willing to delete your own code when a better approach appears.
• Participate in thoughtful code reviews: give clear, kind, direct feedback and be open to having your own ideas challenged.
• Help improve CI pipelines, test suites and dev scripts so the whole team moves faster and more safely over time.
• Maintain high ownership and follow‑through from idea to release: surface blockers early, communicate clearly, and finish what you start.

Qualifications

What we’re looking for

• Familiarity with APIs/HTTP, performance tuning, and SQL/NoSQL basics.
• A proactive mindset – you look ahead, anticipate problems, and propose solutions instead of waiting to be told what to do.
• AI‑native working style – you’re comfortable adopting new tools early, especially AI‑assisted coding, and you see AI as the default starting point rather than a last resort.
• Clear reasoning and trade‑off thinking – you can explain why you chose one approach over another in simple language.
• Strong written and verbal communication for remote collaboration.
• Reliability – you deliver on commitments, surface blockers early, and take responsibility for the quality of your work.

You don’t need to have built a Web SDK before, but you should be comfortable working on libraries and APIs that other developers depend on.

Nice to have

• Experience building SDKs, libraries or developer tools.
• Experience with performance tuning (bundle sizes, loading strategies, caching) in web apps.
• Open‑source contributions, side projects or technical write‑ups that show how you think.
• Interest in sports, media or content tech.

Is this You?

This role will likely suit you if:

• You enjoy figuring out the simplest way to solve a real problem more than endlessly polishing code.
• You’re happy to lean on AI for a lot of the heavy lifting, and focus your energy on decisions, structure and correctness.
• You like understanding how your work is used by other developers and care about making their lives easier.

It probably isn’t right for you if:

• Your ideal day is working alone perfecting hand‑written code and you’re reluctant to use AI or share ownership.
• You mainly want to critique AI‑generated code or architecture from a distance rather than ship small, concrete improvements regularly.

Recruitment Process

We keep the process straightforward and respectful of your time.

A short call to get to know you, share more about Storyteller and the Web SDK, and answer your questions. No coding. We’ll both aim to decide whether it makes sense to go deeper.

2. Paid Take‑home Task (~60 mins)

A small, focused task you can do in your own time. We compensate you for completing it regardless of the outcome.

You’re welcome to use AI tools – we’re interested in how you reason, how you verify and simplify, and how you trade off options, not in how much you type.

3. Review and CTO Interview (60–75 mins)

We’ll review your submission together, dig into your decisions, and you’ll meet Dave (CTO). We’ll talk about how you approach problems, how you use tools like AI, and how you like to work.

And that’s it.