We’re building the place where the right person meets the right opportunity. Not by showing more, but by showing better. This is a role for an engineer who cares as much about the customer’s problem as they do about their craft.

Remote · South Africa   |   Full-time   |   Senior · 7+ years   |   Squad of 4 engineers

Mission

OfferZen exists to help South African tech talent build an awesome future by connecting them to the right teams where they can do their best work. Our next big bet, Reduce the Noise, is all about making OfferZen the place where quality wins. It’s not a volume game, it’s a value game.

“We want to make OfferZen the place where you find the right person to hire, or where you find the right job. Not more. Better.”

You’ll be building marketplace features, AI-powered tools (internally and externally), and internal tooling that makes this vision real. Your work will be felt by real candidates and real hiring companies every day.

Outcomes

• Design, build, and ship meaningful fullstack features every week across front-end and back-end.
• Act as an AI engineer on designated projects, building AI-powered features using tools and frameworks like OpenAI and Anthropic APIs.
• Own solutions end-to-end: from design and scoping through to delivery and post-ship iteration.
• Debug production issues, maintain a stable marketplace, and advocate for quality, performance, and security.
• Lead by example in AI-enabled engineering, using tools like Cursor and V0 to move faster without cutting corners.
• Mentor junior and intermediate engineers through pairing, code review, and honest feedback.
• Participate in Frontend and Backend Guilds, contributing to our component library, architecture, and testing standards.
• Document architectural decisions so new engineers can hit the ground running.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap by spotting areas to improve and making the case for them.

Competencies

• 7+ years of production software engineering experience.
• Strong across the full stack, with a frontend bias. You have a solid grasp of modern frontend architecture, patterns, and what it takes to build a great user experience.
• 5+ years working with React (or similar) in a production environment.
• Product-minded: you think about the customer problem, not just the implementation.
• Strong instincts around patterns, responsibility separation, data modelling, and component-oriented design.
• You write unit tests, document your decisions, and write code that others can confidently build on.
• Experience with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL.
• High confidence, low ego. You’ll back your opinions with data, but hold them loosely.
• You communicate proactively, unblock others, and make those around you better.

AI Fluency: The 4 Ds. We expect all senior engineers to be genuine practitioners of AI-enabled engineering, not just curious about it:

• Delegation: Know which tasks AI can do better or faster, and hand them off confidently.
• Description: Write precise, effective prompts that get the output you actually need.
• Discernment: Critically evaluate AI output. Catch what’s wrong, keep what’s right.
• Diligence: Use AI responsibly, ethically, and securely every time. 

Background and personality

• 7+ years experience in software development.
• Used to working in small teams.
• Good communication skills.
• Driven by learning and continuously striving towards self-improvement.
• High confidence, low ego.
• Capable of backing opinions and decisions with data.
• Driven to work hard to achieve a high level of personal execution.
• Attention to detail.

What it's like to work here

We love to do fun stuff together. We are focused on building a connected tribe and a sense of belonging. We value unique and diverse approaches and ensure we create opportunities to share and learn from each other. We have regular online events, show and tells and a book club as well as regional and annual off-site events.

We're dedicated to authenticity: We treat people as people, caring personally and speaking openly. We foster low-ego behaviour - we own our mistakes as well as our victories. We're never about blame. We're always about honesty, learning and continuous improvement. We ensure lots of transparency and visibility. From OKRs and strategy to analytics and company performance numbers, it's all available for you to see and understand.

We're passionate about learning and levelling up: Everyone at OfferZen strives for a growth mindset. We read books, listen to podcasts, share expertise obsessively, then take on hard challenges with smart guidance and support. When things go wrong, we look for the learning and how to improve.

We’re all about balance: We believe that maintaining a healthy balance between home and work is the key to feeling happier and more productive. We work fully remote and also offer 24 days of leave a year which are available to use from the time you start. 

*This role can be based locally or remotely - we welcome all applicants based in South Africa.