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AI Platform Engineer

Somewhere

Fully Remote
📍 South Africa
🇿🇦 SA Friendly: 1.0/1.0

🇿🇦 Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants

This fully remote full time position at Somewhere is open to applicants from South Africa. The estimated monthly salary is R64,750 – R74,000 ZAR. This role is suited for senior-level professionals. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.

Job Description

AI Platform Engineer

Location:South Africa (expand to LATAM first, then PH, if necessary)

Employment Type:Full-Time (Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST)

Experience Level:4+ Years

Salary:Maximum $4,000

About the Company

Our client builds and deploys autonomous AI agents that handle core operational tasks for small and mid-sized businesses. Operating directly within customer environments, these agents answer messages, run reports, integrate with key business systems, and automate end-to-end workflows.

Each customer receives a dedicated, secure AI agent running on dedicated AWS infrastructure. As the company scales, they are looking for an experiencedAI Platform Engineerto lead the deployment, orchestration, and continuous optimization of these production AI agents and the underlying core platform.

Role Overview

As an AI Platform Engineer, you will own the full lifecycle of customer AI agents—from initial deployment and API integrations to ongoing performance optimization, security, and observability.

This is a high-ownership, highly technical builder/operator role. You will bridge software engineering, cloud infrastructure, and production AI to turn ambiguous customer requirements into reliable, production-grade solutions. You will be responsible for scaling agent orchestration, maintaining infrastructure security, minimizing LLM compute/token costs, and ensuring peak platform uptime.

Key Responsibilities

AI Agent Deployment & Operations
* Deploy, operate, and maintain customer-specific AI environments across AWS infrastructure.
* Safe rollout of system updates and feature releases across live production deployments.
* Enforce Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices to guarantee secure, repeatable, and scalable environments.
* Monitor overall platform health, ensuring high availability, system resilience, and reliability.

Core Platform Engineering & Orchestration
* Architect and enhance the core AI platform that powers multi-agent workflows and orchestration.
* Improve platform observability, tracing, metrics collection, and diagnostic tooling.
* Drive long-term platform architecture, system scalability, and technical standards.

System Integrations
* Design and build secure API integrations with third-party customer platforms (CRMs, email providers, scheduling platforms, project management systems, and custom line-of-business apps).
* Develop maintainable API wrappers, service connectors, and MCP servers for AI agent access.
* Handle complex integration challenges, including authentication flows, webhooks, rate limiting, pagination, and data synchronization.

Data Engineering & Serverless Architecture
* Build serverless ETL pipelines and reporting infrastructure using AWS serverless tools.
* Design robust data warehousing patterns to supply AI agents with accurate operational data.
* Deliver business intelligence tools and telemetry that surface actionable operational insights.

Security, Compliance & Credential Management
* Implement strict least-privilege access controls and secure credential/secret management for customer agents.
* Establish robust authentication/authorization workflows and safeguards against security risks (e.g., prompt injection).
* Ensure complete data isolation and protection across customer environments.

Performance & Cost Optimization
* Optimize AI agent speed, output accuracy, and compute/token efficiency.
* Fine-tune model selection, context management, and inference routines to reduce operational costs.
* Establish cost-attribution tracking across individual customer deployments.

Production Support & Incident Response
* Diagnose and resolve production incidents, agent failures, and integration bottlenecks.
* Conduct root-cause analyses and implement preventative safeguards to eliminate recurring issues.

Qualifications & Skills

Required Qualifications
* Experience:4+ years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated production ownership.
* Core Languages:Strong proficiency inTypeScript,Node.js, andPython.
* Data:AdvancedSQLskills with experience building production-grade data pipelines and storage models.
* Cloud & IaC:Hands-on experience with AWS core services (Lambda, S3, IAM, EC2) andTerraform(or equivalent IaC tools).
* Integrations:Deep understanding of REST APIs, webhooks, OAuth/authentication flows, rate limiting, pagination, and data validation.
* AI/LLMs:Proven experience building and supporting production-level AI applications beyond basic wrapper or chatbot implementations.
* Communication:Exceptional written and verbal English communication skills, with the ability to interface with customer stakeholders and translate ambiguous requirements into technical specifications.

Preferred Qualifications
* Experience operating LLM-powered autonomous agents in production environments.
* Hands-on experience with agent orchestration frameworks and tools (e.g.,Claude Code, Agent SDKs, LangGraph, Model Context Protocol / MCP).
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Tips for South African Applicants

Timezone Advantage

South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.

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Salary in Context

At R64,750/month, this role pays well above the average South African remote salary. The USD equivalent ($3,500/mo) benefits from the favourable exchange rate.

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Application Tips

Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.

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Load Shedding Preparedness

If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.

About Somewhere

Somewhere is a company in the Recruitment & Staffing industry that hires remote workers from South Africa. They currently have 828 open positions on Hirezar. View all Somewhere jobs →