Principal Software Engineer
Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality - South Africa
Job Summary
Ready to code the futurewhile still getting your hands dirty in the present
Were hunting for a rare breed: a battle-tested Software Engineer with 20 years of scars and wins who still gets a genuine rush from writing elegant code and whos already deep in the AI-native trenches.
This isnt a strategy-only architecture role. Youll design and ship enterprise-grade systems across cloud backend web mobile and AIfrom first sketch all the way to production.
Role Overview:
Someone with over 20 years of software engineering experience who is still writing code every day. Someone who embraces AI as an engineering partner not just a productivity tool. Someone who can architect complex systems build production software mentor teams and continuously redefine whats possible with modern software development.
This is not a management role. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an exceptional software engineer who leads through technical excellence curiosity and execution.
Responsibilities
- Design and build enterprise-grade software solutions from concept through to production.
- Define architecture across cloud backend web AI and mobile platforms.
- Develop production-quality software using AI-assisted engineering workflows.
- Build intelligent applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) AI agents and modern AI platforms.
- Design and develop native mobile applications (iOS and Android) and cross-platform solutions using Flutter or similar frameworks.
- Partner with clients and engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges.
- Mentor senior engineers and influence engineering standards through hands-on technical leadership.
- Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies that improve engineering capability and business outcomes.
- Continue coding prototyping and experimenting with new technologies as part of your daily work.
- Bachelors degree in Computer Science Information Systems or related field preferred
- 20 years of professional software engineering experience.
- Strong architecture capabilities
- Extensive experience building cloud-native applications using Azure AWS and/or Google Cloud.
- Deep knowledge of modern software architecture APIs distributed systems DevSecOps CI/CD and secure software engineering
- Multi-agent AI systems
- Edge AI
- Experience developing native mobile applications using Swift and/or Kotlin
- On-device AI
- React Native MAUI
- Developer Experience (DevEx)
- Building engineering platforms and accelerators
- Cursor
- Claude Code
- GitHub Copilot
- OpenAI Codex
- Windsurf
- Gemini Code Assist
- Lovable
- Firebase Studio
Required Skills:
Architecture Azure AWS Google Cloud LLM platforms React MAUI