(AI) Rapid Prototyping Engineer

Warp Development|Posted 23 days ago

Skills and experience

Role:Prompt engineer

Other roles:Data engineer, Machine learning engineer

Experience in role:4+ years

Language proficiency:English

Must-have skills:

Artificial Intelligence

Neural Networks

Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing

Python

Nice-to-have skills:

Java

C++

Agile

API Design

Location and salary

Remote policy:Hybrid

Location of job:Somerset West, South Africa or Pretoria, South Africa

Visa requirements:Authorised to work in South Africa With status of citizen/passport holder or permanent resident

Visa sponsorship:Unable to sponsor visa

Employment type:Permanent

Role description

Role Description

At Warp Development, we measure success by shipped features—not model parameters. Our mission is to deliver production-grade generative AI solutions that solve real customer problems right away: from summarising hundreds of documents to automating ticket-filing workflows. We prototype rapidly and iterate continuously, ensuring our offerings remain at the forefront of innovation

As part of our AI team, you’ll be the driving force behind end-to-end LLM integrations and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines. If you instinctively ask “Can A.I. help?” at every opportunity, then build, refine, and deploy solutions before anyone else reaches for Google.

What You’ll Do

LLM Integration & Prompt Engineering

Design, implement, and version-control prompts, system messages, and function-calling workflows

Instrument telemetry for latency, token usage, and success/failure metrics

RAG Pipeline Development

Build cost-effective, accurate pipelines: document chunking, embeddings generation, vector search, and re-ranking

Agentic Prototypes

Prototype autonomous workflows that chain tools, memory, and human-in-the-loop feedback

Rapid Demos & APIs

Spin up lightweight APIs, CLIs, or Next.js demos so stakeholders can interact with your work immediately

Performance Optimisation

Monitor and optimise for latency, token spend, throughput gains, and reliability

Knowledge Sharing

Post “Today I Learned” snippets in Slack/Notion and write clear documentation and one-click setup scripts

Must-Have Skills

Python Expertise: Asynchronous programming, type hints, pytest, and dependency/tool management (poetry, virtualenv)

API Mastery: REST/GraphQL, authentication flows, pagination, and rate-limit handling

LLM Experience: Proven success calling OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, or Azure OpenAI APIs

Vector Technologies: Hands-on with Pinecone, pgvector, Chroma, Weaviate, or similar vector databases

Agile Mindset: Comfort with ambiguity and rapidly changing requirements

AI-First Habits: Regular use of AI tooling (code generation, documentation, diagramming) to boost your own productivity

Nice-to-Have (Bonus)

Local model deployment (Llama 3, Phi-3, Mistral) with GGUF, vLLM, or Ollama

Experience with Azure AI Studio/Bedrock orchestration (cost control, observability)

Front-end prototyping using Next.js or similar frameworks

Familiarity with emerging AI SDKs (OpenAI JSON mode, LangChain v1, PromptLayer)

DevOps basics: Docker, serverless architectures, infrastructure-as-code

Why Join Us?

Impact: Ship AI features used by real customers within weeks

Growth: Stay ahead of the state of the art through continuous scouter and evals

Culture: Collaborative, fast-paced, and committed to learning and sharing

About Warp Development

51-200 employees

Background

We're a mature software house that has grown from humble beginnings in 2002. Over the past 20 years, we have been exposed to many industries, technologies and platforms, but have nested ourselves in the digital commerce space and become a solid force to reckon with.

We develop full turnkey Bespoke, E-Commerce, Order Management and Warehouse Management solutions, for many verticals and industries. This includes a hybrid of self-built technologies like Storefront, Order Easy and Warehouse Easy, plus off the shelf tools that enable our business to be a serious competitor locally and globally.

Our bespoke software department helps clients with unique and tailor-made solutions to fit their business needs for custom development, app development and content management systems. We also provide a full range of outsourced IT solutions, managed services and infrastructure support. Today, we are a full-stack development house, with offices in Pretoria and Somerset West, that embraces an agile, hybrid working model and all elements required to provide an umbrella IT solution. Our focus has shifted to the international stage, where we build out squads and teams for companies in Europe, North and South America, and Asia.

Our Culture

Passionate about coding
Career driven
Self-motivated
Young, dynamic & engaged
Informal & hybrid working environment
Believes in building lasting relationships
Fun and a little quirkiness

We hire people who share our values, practices and favour a positive attitude.

About us

We are committed to:

Providing top conceptual skills
- Delivering measurable business results
- Creating solutions that work
- Honesty, integrity and trust
- High quality and fair price
- Service levels that exceed our peers
- Efficiency & effectiveness

Our team consists of 100+ dedicated and experienced members that are all trained according to international standards. Our staff use world-class tools, platforms and methodologies to ensure the delivery and support of a superior service and product.

Why choose us?

Experience matters - Warp's executive team are conversion-focused, result orientated and are characterised by high levels of professionalism. Our team has been collectively developing and championing clients' digital strategies for over 20 years in a variety of industry sectors and categories. We make sure our clients stand out from the rest.

Our Hiring Process