Developer Experience Engineer

Make Developers' Lives Easier

• Platform Engineering Team

What We're Building

Softsure is the technology company behind Dotsure, one of South Africa's leading pet insurance providers. For 15 years, our platform has processed policies, claims, payments, and integrations. It works. But it's a VB.NET monolith with a single SQL Server database, and it's reaching the limits of what that architecture can support.

We're not throwing it away. We're modernising it piece by piece using the strangler fig pattern: new capabilities in C# , Blazor, and Azure services, gradually replacing the legacy code while the system keeps running. By 2030, we'll have a modern, event-driven, API-first platform that other business units can build on.

Squad B is the team that makes this happen. These six roles form the platform engineering capability that will build the foundations: the data platform, the CI/CD pipelines, the API layer, the AI integrations, and the developer experience tooling.

What We're Looking For

Every role requires experience migrating legacy systems to modern architectures. We don't need people who've only worked on greenfield projects. We need people who understand the messiness of real systems: the undocumented business rules, the integrations that nobody remembers building, the edge cases that only appear in production.

We need people who can look at a 15-year-old codebase and see both what it is and what it could become.

How long does it take a new developer to ship their first feature at your current company? Weeks? Months? We want it to be days. We're building an internal developer platform with Backstage, golden path templates, and self-service tooling. We need someone who obsesses over developer productivity and knows how to remove friction from the development process.

About This Role

Softsure is building a Platform Engineering practice, and developer experience is central to that effort. We're implementing Backstage as our internal developer portal, creating templates for new services, and building the self-service capabilities that let developers focus on building rather than fighting infrastructure. This role is about making the platform so good that teams actually want to use it.

What You'll Do

• Implement and maintain Backstage as our internal developer portal

• Build the service catalogue so developers can discover what exists and who owns it

• Create golden path templates: "start a new API service" should take 5 minutes, not 5 days

• Design software templates that enforce our standards while staying flexible

• Write documentation that developers actually read (yes, it's possible)

• Build self-service capabilities: environment provisioning, secrets management, config updates

• Implement TechDocs so documentation lives with code and stays current

• Create developer productivity dashboards and track metrics that matter

• Gather feedback from developers and turn complaints into improvements

• Run enablement sessions and training when we roll out new capabilities

• Contribute to software development and platform engineering tasks, including coding, debugging, and optimisation where it improves developer experience outcomes.

• Build and maintain internal tools, scripts, and services that enhance developer productivity and reduce friction.

• Collaborate with engineering teams to write and review production-quality code aligned to platform standards and best practices.

• Support integration and automation efforts across the platform, contributing code where required to enable self-service capabilities.

• Assist with refactoring and improving existing systems and tooling to align with modern engineering practices.

• Participate in code reviews, testing, and continuous improvement initiatives within the platform engineering team.

What You Bring

• You've worked on internal developer tools or platforms before. You understand the unique challenges

• 3+ years software development experience

• Backstage experience or similar developer portal platforms (Port, Cortex, OpsLevel)

• Strong TypeScript and React skills (Backstage frontend is React)

• You understand developer workflows because you've been a developer

• Technical writing skills. You can explain complex things simply

• Empathy for developer experience. You notice friction that others accept as normal

Education

• Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.

• Relevant certifications in cloud platforms, DevOps, or developer tooling (Azure preferred) will be advantageous.

• Equivalent practical experience improving developer workflows, tooling, and platform adoption will also be considered.

Nice to Have

• Experience building CLI tools or VS Code extensions

• Knowledge of the Backstage plugin ecosystem

• Experience measuring developer productivity (DORA metrics, developer surveys)

• Training or facilitation experience

• You've evangelised platform adoption to sceptical teams

Why Join Us

• Build the developer platform from the ground up

• Direct impact on how productive every developer in the company is

• Work with modern tools (Backstage, GitHub Enterprise)

• A team that values developer experience, not just developer output

• Competitive salary and visible impact on the organisation

Location & Work Arrangement

This is an in-office role based in George, Western Cape, South Africa. We believe the collaboration and mentorship required for a transformation of this scale happens best when the team is together.