About the job

💻 Bring 3-5 years of full-stack engineering experience in user-facing products

⚙️ Build and optimise full-stack systems powering a large-scale travel platform

🤖 Leverage AI and automation to improve development workflows and product capabilities

🔁 Work cross-functionally with Product, Design, and Engineering from idea to launch

📍 V&A Waterfront, Cape Town (hybrid)

LekkeSlaap is South Africa's leading accommodation booking app known for its user-friendliness, exceptional customer experience, and extensive local accommodation options. Owned by Tripco, a travel technology company based in the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. LekkeSlaap is committed to innovation, best-in-class customer service, and setting new standards in travel technology.

As an Intermediate Full Stack Software Engineer at Tripco, you'll be a part of a close-knit Product & Engineering team, building and optimising the technology that powers our products. You'll work across the full technology stack, delivering high-quality, scalable, and maintainable solutions enhancing the travel booking experience for millions of users. From backend architecture to front-end performance, you'll collaborate with cross-functional teams to bring ideas to life while ensuring our systems are secure, efficient, and future-ready.

You'll also play an active role in leveraging AI-driven tools and automation to improve development efficiency, optimise internal processes, and enhance product capabilities as the industry continues to evolve.

Our Stack

You'll work with a diverse and modern technology ecosystem, including:

• Core Stack: Backend - PHP (Laravel), Frontend - Twig/HTML/CSS/JavaScript (React), MySQL (MariaDB), Redis, and Nginx

• Additional Languages: Python, C++, and Rust for performance-critical and specialised microservices

• AI, Data & Automation: Active use of AI-driven tools, automation, and data-informed solutions to improve internal systems, development workflows, and product capabilities

• Infrastructure: Containerised apps using HashiCorp's Nomad, Consul, Vault, and Terraform on a self-managed multi-server environment

• CI/CD: Docker and GitHub Actions for automated builds, testing, and deployments

Responsibilities

• Application Development: Design, build, test, and deploy scalable and maintainable web applications across the full stack

• Performance & Security: Optimise system performance and implement secure coding practices that meet industry standards and protect customer data

• Code Quality: Participate in peer code reviews, maintaining high standards for maintainability, readability, and test coverage

• Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with product managers, designers, and other developers to translate business needs into technical solutions

• Problem Resolution: Diagnose and resolve software bugs, bottlenecks, and performance issues quickly and effectively

• Documentation: Maintain clear, practical technical documentation that captures system context and business logic to support ongoing development and long-term maintainability

• Continuous Improvement: Contribute to the continuous improvement of tools, frameworks, and practices to enhance development efficiency and product quality

• Automation & AI Enablement: Actively identify opportunities to introduce automation and AI-assisted solutions across the development lifecycle, from testing and deployments to internal tooling and workflows, and product features for our guests & hosts

• Platform Independence: Develop solutions with a platform-agnostic mindset to support long-term scalability and flexibility

• Product feature ownership: Take full ownership of features, and collaborate across departments to ensure successful integration

Requirements

Behavioural competencies

• Collaboration: Thrives in a team environment, working efficiently across multiple disciplines and fostering a culture of shared goals

• Problem-solving mindset: Approaches challenges with a doer mentality, balancing analysis, planning, and hands-on execution to deliver results

• Adaptability: Open and eager to learn new technologies, including emerging AI and automation tools, as the tech landscape evolves

• Urgency & ownership: Manages workload effectively, makes confident decisions, and takes full ownership of deliverables

• Continuous learning: Proactively keeps skills and knowledge current to remain ahead of industry trends, with a strong interest in AI-driven development practices

• Attention to quality: Committed to delivering high-quality, secure, and maintainable code

Functional Experience & Competencies

• 3-5 years of proven experience as a Full Stack Software Engineer or similar role, ideally within a web-based, high-traffic, user-facing product environment

• Proficiency in our stack, or similar technologies, as outlined above

• Familiarity with software design principles, coding best practices, and scalable architecture

• Experience with version control systems, particularly Git

• Keen interest in using AI tools and automation to improve productivity, code quality, and development workflows

Bonus if you have:

• Good eye for UI/UX design and experience with relevant tools (eg. Figma)

• Experience or strong interest in Machine Learning, Data Analytics, or data-driven product development

• Prior exposure to AI-powered features, automation tooling, or intelligent systems

• Comfortable with the terminal, Linux and Git

• Hands-on experience with containerisation (Docker) and orchestration tools (eg. Nomad/Kubernetes).

• Exposure to continuous integration and deployment pipelines (eg. Github Actions)

• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS and infrastructure-as-code (eg. Terraform)

• Understanding of the web infrastructure—DNS, HTTP, SSL, loadbalancing, etc

Benefits

• Hybrid work model & flexible start times

• Free lunch when in office

• Modern offices based at the V&A Waterfront

• Showers on site

• Travel vouchers and discounts

• Discovery medical aid contributions & Vitality Health membership

• Retirement annuity contributions

• High-end laptops and workstation setup for both in-office and WFH

• Team budget for learning, online courses, and developer conferences

• Generous leave package

• Half-day off every month

• Digital nomad month (work from anywhere)

• Regular team events and more!

We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and encourage applications from all suitably qualified candidates, including persons with disabilities.