Backend Engineer

• Architect the future: design, implement, and evolve distributed systems that handle high throughput and millions of concurrent transactions.
• Provide technical leadership: act as a go-to expert for backend and infrastructure topics, mentoring teams and raising the overall engineering bar.
• Optimize performance: identify bottlenecks and design scalable solutions that improve availability, latency, and cost efficiency.
• Drive reliability: establish solid standards for monitoring, alerting, and incident management, ensuring our systems are observable and resilient.
• Collaborate across teams: partner with product and business leaders to translate ideas into clear technical strategies and execution plans.
• Improve continuously: challenge existing solutions, propose better patterns, and keep us aligned with modern practices in distributed systems and DevOps.
• Lead by example: write clean, maintainable code; review peers’ work; and ensure consistent engineering quality across services.
• Be part of on-call rotations for critical systems, focusing on root-cause prevention, not firefighting.

Principal Backend Software Engineer, Customer

• Build and own backend services using Java, Spring Boot, and Python—designed for scale, reliability, and real-time use.
• Use AI tools (Amazon Q, Cursor, Copilot, Claude, GPT) to accelerate development, refactoring, and problem-solving.
• Turn product ideas into production-ready systems quickly, without compromising quality.
• Integrate AI capabilities (LLMs, RAG, vector search) into backend workflows where they add real value.
• Act as the final filter for AI-generated code—identify flaws, inefficiencies, and incorrect assumptions before they ship.
• Design clean APIs, handle distributed system challenges, and ensure performance at scale.
• Write and validate tests to keep fast-moving systems stable.
• Debug production issues and take full ownership of reliability and performance.

Senior Backend Developer, AI

• Building and improving customer-facing features across a large, established PHP/Symfony web application backed by MySQL
• Developing new UI components and views in React/TypeScript
• Exposing new data and reporting through portal pages, reporting views, and API layers
• Integrating third-party services via their APIs and SDKs, and maintaining clean abstraction layers
• Enhancing and extending the existing PHP API layer to support new platform features
• Full-stack delivery across backend and frontend, picking up whatever the backlog needs

Senior Full-Stack Developer, PHP

• Work closely with the rest of the engineering team to deliver solutions ranging from small-scale client assistance to stack-spanning alterations that enable huge new features.
• Work with the support and operations teams to understand large client problems from first principles and propose new solutions.
• Gain a holistic understanding of the Lessonspace stack, infrastructure and internal development environment, as well as how our customers use us, with an eye to becoming a potent source of internal systems knowledge for other engineers and teams to depend on.
• Be able to take full ownership of your feature releases, testing and reliability, ultimately delivering major releases with confidence and minimal assistance.
• You will be working at the nexus of engineering, sales and operations and may be engaged to deliver specific features to help larger customers onboard smoothly onto our platform.

Senior Backend Engineer

• Help to design and build new features
• Integrate to third-party services and APIs
• Perform code reviews for other Engineers and provide thoughtful feedback
• Work with Product Managers to scope, define and estimate work
• Support with DevOps - monitoring and maintaining test and production environments
• Maintain the high standards of our codebase
• Support other team members including regular Pairing sessions

Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Laravel/Vue.js

• Design, develop, test, and maintain scalable, resilient, and high-performing backend systems.
• Contribute to architecture and design discussions, helping shape technical solutions across services and platforms.
• Write clean, maintainable, and secure code with a strong focus on quality and reliability.
• Identify and resolve performance, scalability, and operational challenges.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering standards, tooling, and development practices.
• Engineering Delivery
• Own features and technical initiatives from design through deployment and support.
• Build and maintain distributed systems and microservices that support business-critical operations.
• Ensure strong observability, monitoring, and operational excellence practices are embedded into solutions.
• Contribute to CI/CD, infrastructure improvements, and developer productivity initiatives.
• Participate in troubleshooting, incident response, and root-cause analysis activities.
• Collaboration & Mentorship
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Designers, and fellow engineers to deliver impactful solutions.
• Participate in technical discussions, code reviews, and design reviews.
• Share knowledge and mentor junior and mid-level engineers through coaching and technical guidance.
• Promote engineering best practices and contribute positively to team culture.
• Business & Stakeholder Partnership
• Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Provide technical input into planning, estimation, and delivery discussions.
• Communicate technical trade-offs and recommendations effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Backend Engineer jobs in South Africa

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Principal Backend Software Engineer, Customer

Senior Backend Developer, AI

Senior Full-Stack Developer, PHP

Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Laravel/Vue.js

Senior Backend Software Engineer