Software Engineer jobs in South Africa

Location: Cape Town, SA / Remote

Employment Type: Full-time

Salary: Competitive + Share Options

Reporting To: Head of Engineering

Clairo AI is a London-based AI agent builder focused on fully private AI.

Our platform enables businesses to deploy AI agents that connect to their internal data sources while ensuring complete privacy—without relying on external APIs.

We operate our own bare‑metal infrastructure and have developed a large‑scale Kubernetes platform to scale our AI models, microservices, and enterprise applications.

Our AI stack is designed to solve complex business challenges across data search, automation, and AI‑powered decision‑making.

Following a successful funding round, we are expanding our engineering and marketing teams, hiring four to five new team members.

At Clairo AI, we embed Responsible AI into everything we do:

Privacy: We prioritise data security and client confidentiality.

Sustainability: Our Icelandic data centre enables us to run AI infrastructure with net‑zero emissions.

Trust: We ensure AI reliability through trust metrics, citations, and better prompting.

Education: We actively educate businesses on how to use AI effectively and responsibly.

Join us in redefining AI for business—private, secure, and high‑performance.

We are looking for a Full‑Stack Software Engineer to play a key role in building and scaling our platform.

This is an opportunity to redesign our backend, which requires significant improvements in performance, reliability, and scalability.

You will have the freedom to bring fresh ideas and build core backend components from the ground up.

Beyond the backend, you will work on our TypeScript and React frontend, which needs further refinement to reach a professional‑grade standard.

Additionally, you will contribute to building AI‑powered features, integrating AI into our product to solve complex business challenges.

This role also involves working with containerised applications and Kubernetes.

We run all our AI models, microservices, and applications on a bare‑metal Kubernetes platform, offering significant learning opportunities in this space.

• Rebuild and optimise Clairo AI's backend to improve scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Refine and enhance our frontend using TypeScript and React, ensuring a professional‑grade user experience.
• Work closely with our AI engineering team to develop and integrate AI‑driven features into the platform.
• Architect and maintain APIs for seamless integration between AI agents and enterprise data sources.
• Collaborate with other engineers to ensure best coding practices, security, and maintainability.

• Strong experience in backend development, ideally with Python, TypeScript, or Go.
• Experience with TypeScript and React, with the ability to enhance and refine front‑end applications.
• Familiarity with API development, database management (SQL and NoSQL), and distributed systems.
• Experience with Docker and containerisation technologies.
• Interest in learning Kubernetes (prior experience is a plus).

• Experience working with AI / ML models, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), or vector databases.
• Experience in building SDKs or frameworks.
• Previous experience in building and deploying AI‑powered features.
• Experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Understanding of enterprise security and data privacy regulations.

• Competitive salary with share options.
• Opportunity to relocate to the UK – after one year, Clairo AI will discuss visa sponsorship for candidates who wish to move to the UK.
• Unlimited leave – Take time off whenever you need it.
• Hybrid and flexible working – Work when and where you want, as long as the work gets done.
• Client project opportunities – Work directly with UK businesses, designing AI agents to solve complex challenges.
• Networking with top UK entrepreneurs – Clairo AI is closely connected to leading business figures, providing strong career‑building opportunities.
• Cape Town team culture fund – Sponsored beer money for social gatherings with the Cape Town‑based team.
• Future office space in Innovation City, Cape Town – A growing tech hub set to become Africa's equivalent of Silicon Valley.