Senior Backend Engineer
South Africa (Hybrid)Full-timeSeniorEngineering
About the Role
We need a Senior Backend Engineer to design and scale the infrastructure that powers the APEX platform. You will build the APIs, data pipelines, and service orchestration that connect Zenith’s data aggregation layer, Quantum’s AI analytics, Vector’s verification engine, and Echo’s communication systems. The data you move and the systems you build directly inform decisions at the highest levels of industry and government.
Qualifications
Minimum Requirements
- 5+ years backend engineering experience in production environments
- Strong proficiency in Python and/or C#/.NET
- 3+ years designing and building RESTful APIs and/or GraphQL services
- Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL solutions (MongoDB, Redis)
- Solid understanding of distributed systems, message queues, and event-driven architectures
- English language fluency, written and spoken
Preferred Skills
- Experience with cloud-native development on AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Familiarity with container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Background in data pipeline design and ETL/ELT workflows
- Experience with authentication systems (OAuth2, SAML, JWT)
- Exposure to AI/ML model serving and integration
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs for APEX platform modules (Zenith, Quantum, Vector, Echo)
- Architect scalable data pipelines that aggregate, transform, and serve data from diverse sources
- Implement robust authentication, authorisation, and multi-tenant data isolation
- Optimise database performance, query efficiency, and system reliability at scale
- Collaborate with data engineers on ETL pipeline design and with ML engineers on model integration
- Define and enforce API contracts, versioning strategies, and service boundaries
- Contribute to infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment automation
- Participate in on-call rotations and incident response for production systems
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
- Demonstrable experience building and operating backend systems serving enterprise clients
- Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure) are advantageous
Why Join Us?
- Engineer the backbone of an enterprise intelligence platform processing data across agriculture, mining, and banking
- Work with modern cloud-native architectures and cutting-edge AI integration patterns
- Small team, big responsibility — you will own entire service domains
- Hybrid work from South Africa with flexible scheduling