Senior Full-Stack Engineer – Backend-Leaning

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in South Africa.

📋 Description

• Act as the inaugural engineer and technical leader for the company.

• Take ownership of the platform’s data architecture, security protocols, payment systems, background tasks, integrations, and overall production readiness.

• Establish the technical strategy, architecture, testing protocols, and code evaluation processes.

• Authorize all releases, while the product founder approves visual modifications.

• Implement Vitest, Playwright, and GitHub Actions as a merge gate.

• Create foundational elements including Postgres with row-level security, authentication processes, Stripe billing, background jobs, transactional email systems, and third-party integrations.

• Spearhead the platform launch and successfully transition 60 customers from GoHighLevel without data loss.

• Manage a two-week parallel migration period for customers.

• Be responsible for production error tracking, logging, alerts, incident response, performance monitoring, and cost management.

• Collaborate closely with the product founder to shape project briefs and proactively identify risks.

• Document the platform and assist in hiring and leading the next engineer.

• In the first 90 days, familiarize yourself with the code and build plans, deliver a minor fix, take on the role of reviewer for shipped work, manage security and data protection, lead the launch efforts, and oversee customer migrations.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 5 years of experience as a professional software engineer.

• More than 2 years of experience in building and managing a multi-tenant SaaS product in a production environment.

• Proficient in TypeScript, React 19, and Next.js App Router, including Server Components, Server Actions, streaming, and caching in Next.js 15/16.

• Strong skills in Postgres beyond the ORM, encompassing schema design, migrations, indexing, query performance, and row-level security.

• Practical experience with Stripe subscriptions, webhooks, idempotency, and usage- or credit-based billing models.

• Familiarity with background jobs and queues such as Inngest, Trigger.dev, BullMQ, or similar technologies.

• Experience with automated testing as a release gate, CI practices, and Vercel preview deployments.

• Proven production ownership using Sentry or comparable tools.

• Regular, disciplined use of agentic AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex.

• Ability to create small PRs, conduct tests before merging, and review code diffs.

• Experience in reviewing colleagues’ code as a prerequisite for production releases.

• Background in mentoring less experienced engineers.

• Capable of working independently as the sole engineer and managing tasks autonomously.

• Ability to articulate technical risks in simple terms, providing options and recommendations.

• Nice to have: Experience developing features utilizing Anthropic or OpenAI APIs.

• Nice to have: Experience in migrating customers and data between platforms.

• Nice to have: Familiarity with handling large external datasets and third-party data APIs.

• Nice to have: Knowledge of multi-tenant security principles, including OWASP Top 10, secrets management, audit logging, and UK GDPR compliance.

• Nice to have: Experience with GoHighLevel, Resend, MapLibre, SEO, and Core Web Vitals.

• No property knowledge or visual design skills are required; the necessary domain knowledge will be provided, and the product founder will oversee design.

🏝️ Benefits

• Fully remote position.

• Full-time employment opportunity.

• Work within UK hours.

• Chance to become the company’s first engineer and technical leader.

• Opportunity to guide and mentor the product founder.

• Chance to assist in hiring and leading the next engineer.