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.

THE 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.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• 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 that we continue to evolve as the space matures.

• 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.

THE TECH STACK

Ruby on Rails, React, Next.js, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Redis, AWS

We use Ruby on Rails on the backend, but if you're a strong JS fullstack engineer, that's absolutely fine. We'll give you the time and space to get up to speed on Ruby. With AI, you don't need to be a syntax expert.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 7+ years of production software engineering experience.

• You're strong across the full stack, but frontend is where you're most at home. 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.

• You're a product-minded engineer. 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.

YOUR FIRST 3 MONTHS

We'll give you a structured 3-month onboarding plan. The goal isn't to throw you in the deep end. It's to give you the space to understand how we work, get close to the product, and build real context. After that, we expect you to be fully contributing: shipping features, influencing the problems we tackle, driving technical decisions, and helping the team level up.

WHY OFFERZEN

• Autonomy and agency: You own your solutions. Your ideas are heard, your decisions matter, and your contribution is visible.

• Shape Up rhythm: We move fast, but we also protect time for cooldowns: upskilling, AI experimentation, hackathons, and tackling tech debt.

• Small team, big impact: In a squad of 4 engineers, you're not a number. You show up for your team, and your team shows up for you.

• Real problems, real users: You're building for South Africa's tech community. The work is meaningful and the feedback loop is short.

This role can be based locally or remotely. We welcome all applicants based in South Africa.

We believe in hiring great people and trusting them to do great work.