Senior Back End Engineer
Cape Town or Johannesburg, South Africa
Cape Town or Johannesburg, South Africa
Elixirr Digital is transforming how consulting services are delivered. This role is critical to designing and implementing the backend infrastructure that powers our AI-driven solutions and internal agent platform. As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will leverage modern cloud services (AWS and Azure), open-source frameworks and the latest AI developer tooling to build a scalable, secure and opinionated platform for Elixirr’s next generation of tech-enabled consulting.
This is an engineering role for someone who wants to move fast in a modern AI-assisted software development lifecycle. You will not just use AI tools — you will help define how Elixirr’s engineering org adopts them responsibly: the harnesses, specs, evals, review practices and guardrails that turn AI-generated code into production-grade software.
At Elixirr Digital, you’ll have the opportunity to work with advanced tools, grow alongside a team of talented professionals, and make a lasting impact in diverse industries.
Candidates applying for employment contract kindly note this position is a onsite working opportunity from our locations in Cape Town or Johannesburg.
What you will be doing as a Senior Back End Engineer at Elixirr Digital?
Platform Architecture & Development
Design, implement and maintain the core backend architecture for Elixirr’s AI-augmented consulting platform and agent platform.
Drive decisions on microservices, containerization and serverless solutions (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, ECS, AKS) based on performance, cost and scalability requirements.
Own services end-to-end: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, observability and on-call.
AI-Assisted Software Development Lifecycle
Operate fluently across a modern, layered AI developer stack: editor-level copilots, agentic coding tools, repo-aware assistants, AI in CI (test generation, security and performance checks) and AI-assisted product discovery.
Practice spec-driven, harness-based development: write precise specifications, acceptance criteria and context briefs that let AI tools generate useful code instead of guessing.
Treat prompts, agents and evals as first-class engineering artifacts — versioned, reviewed and tested like any other code.
Hold the quality bar high on AI-generated code: review rigorously for correctness, security, edge cases, performance and long-term maintainability. Volume comes from AI; quality comes from engineers.
Build and maintain the internal guardrails — eval harnesses, security checks, policy controls — that make AI-assisted development safe and repeatable for the rest of the team.
Help the team measure impact with clear engineering metrics (deployment frequency, cycle time, change failure rate, defect density) so we know where AI is actually helping.
Open-Source & Cloud Integration
Evaluate and integrate open-source frameworks to reduce build time and improve reliability (e.g., FastAPI, Django, Spring Boot, Node.js frameworks).
Leverage AWS and Azure services (e.g., EC2, S3, RDS, Cosmos DB, Event Hub, SQS, EventBridge) to deliver high-availability, high-performance solutions.
Integrate with the agent platform: LLM providers, vector stores, orchestration frameworks (LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen) and retrieval pipelines.
Security & Compliance
Implement robust security measures — OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, fine-grained authorization, secrets management, data protection — by default, not as an afterthought.
Address the specific risks of AI-assisted development: prompt injection, insecure AI-generated code, hallucinated dependencies, and supply chain risks from AI developer tooling.
Ensure compliance with relevant industry regulations and Elixirr’s internal data governance standards (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Work closely with product, DevOps, front-end, AI engineers, data scientists and client-facing consultants to turn ambiguous problems into shipped product.
Communicate architectural decisions and technical trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Performance, Reliability & Observability
Set up and maintain logging, tracing, metrics and alerting — including LLM-specific observability (prompts, tool calls, tokens, cost, latency) — so the platform is understandable and debuggable in production.
Diagnose and resolve bottlenecks, and make the platform scale as client and internal usage grows.
Mentorship & Thought Leadership
Mentor engineers across our UK, Croatia and South Africa teams — especially on how to work effectively alongside AI tooling.
Advocate for best practices in cloud-native development, CI/CD and AI-enhanced workflows.
Competencies and skillset we expect you to have to successfully perform your job:
Education & Experience
Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.
5+ years building and operating large-scale backend systems in cloud environments (AWS and/or Azure).
Technical Expertise
Strong proficiency in Python and/or at least one major backend language/framework (e.g., FastAPI, Django, Java/Spring Boot, Node.js).
Experience with microservices, RESTful API design, event-driven and serverless architectures.
Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep).
Solid understanding of relational and NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB).
AI-Augmented Engineering
Demonstrable daily use of AI-assisted developer tools (coding agents, Copilot-style assistants, AI code review, AI-driven test generation) with a clear view on where they help and where they don’t.
Experience writing and reviewing AI-generated code with the same (or higher) rigor as human-written code.
Comfort integrating LLMs, machine learning models, agent frameworks and evaluation tooling into backend services.
Cloud & DevOps
Hands-on with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) and modern practices for automated testing, code quality and safe deployment.
Familiarity with DORA metrics and engineering analytics to measure the impact of changes in process and tooling.
Soft Skills
Excellent communication and problem-solving; a track record of delivering complex projects on time.
Self-driven and proactive — you pick up new tools, form a view, and bring the team with you.
Preferred Qualifications
Multi-cloud experience: hands-on with both AWS and Azure in production.
Familiarity with enterprise security and compliance standards (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
Previous exposure to consulting or professional services environments.
Experience working in distributed teams across multiple time zones.
Why is Elixirr Digital the right next step for you?
From working with cutting-edge technologies to solving complex challenges for global clients, we make sure your work matters. And while you’re building great things, we’re here to support you.
Compensation & Equity:
Health & Wellbeing:
Projects & Tools:
Learning & Growth:
We don’t just offer a job - we create space for you to grow, thrive, and be recognized.
Intrigued? Apply now!
