First seen by Alion on Oct 20, 2026.
Location: Pretoria, South Africa
Work Model: Hybrid
Contract Duration: 3 years
We're looking for an exceptional Senior AI Software Engineer to help shape the evolution of a modern, AI-native data and platform ecosystem. This is a unique opportunity for a hands-on engineer who thrives at the intersection of software engineering, data engineering, cloud platforms, and AI-enabled development.
You'll own the full software lifecycle, from architecture and design through development, deployment, monitoring, support, and continuous improvement while building scalable data products, AI-powered solutions, and cloud-native platform capabilities.
Duties & Responsibilities- Design, build, test, deploy, and operate secure, scalable, production-grade software and data products.
- Develop high-quality Python and Java solutions for APIs, microservices, automation, integrations, and platform services.
- Engineer reliable batch and event-driven data pipelines with strong observability, governance, and data quality controls.
Build AI-enabled solutions leveraging:
- LLMs
- AI Agents
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- Prompt & Context Engineering
- AI Evaluation Frameworks
- Guardrails & Human Approval Workflows
Drive engineering excellence through:
- CI/CD
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
- Automated Testing
- Secure Coding Practices
- Code Reviews
- Production Readiness
- Collaboration closely with Product Owners, Architects, Data Engineers, Security, and Operations teams.
- Mentor engineers and contribute to technical leadership, architecture, and best practices.
Must have tech stack - 10 years and above;
Java
- Enterprise Java Development
- Spring / Spring Boot
- REST API Development
- Microservices Architecture
- Integration Services
Python
- 8+ years Python
- Data processing
- Automation
- APIs
- AI integrations
AI Engineering & GenAI
- LLMs
- RAG
- Prompt Engineering
- AI Agents
- AI-assisted Development
Software Engineering
- Enterprise application development
- Object-oriented design
- System design
- Secure coding
- Production support
API & Integration Development
- REST APIs
- Service Integration
- API Design
- Event-driven architecture
Data Engineering / Data Processing
- ETL / ELT
- Data Pipelines
- Data Transformation
- Database Development
- Data Quality
Databases
- PostgreSQL
- Oracle
- SQL Development
Qualifications
- Relevant degree or diploma in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Data
- Engineering or a related field.
- 10 years of relevant software engineering experience, including responsibility for complex production systems.
- Expert-level delivery using Python and/or Java, with strong data and integration engineering experience.
- Practical evidence of AI-assisted or AI-native engineering, including evaluation, governance and accountable human review.
- AWS, Java, Python, data engineering, architecture, DevOps, Kubernetes, Terraform, Agile or AI-related certifications are advantageous.
Package & Remuneration
Market related

