Senior Back End Engineer

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 an 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.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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

• Performance bonus
• Employee Stock Options Grant
• Employee Share Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Competitive compensation

Health & Wellbeing

• Health benefits plan
• Flexible working hours
• Pension plan

Projects & Tools

• Modern equipment
• Big clients and interesting projects
• Cutting-edge technologies

Learning & Growth

• Growth and development opportunities
• Internal LMS & knowledge hubs

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