Location: Cape Town, South Africa (Hybrid or On‑site)
Role Overview
We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to design and build high‑performance switching systems that route, process, and manage real‑time transactions or communications at scale. This role is deeply technical and backend‑focused, requiring strong experience in low‑latency systems, concurrency, and reliability engineering. You will play a key role in building the core systems that power critical flows in our platform.
Key Responsibilities
Core Systems & Switching Logic
- Design and implement switching/routing engines for high‑throughput, low‑latency systems
- Build systems that handle real‑time decisioning, routing, and failover
- Develop and maintain protocol‑level integrations (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, gRPC, or domain‑specific protocols)
- Ensure correctness, ordering, and idempotency in transaction flows
Performance & Reliability
- Optimize systems for latency, throughput, and fault tolerance
- Design for high availability and graceful degradation
- Implement robust retry, backoff, and circuit‑breaking mechanisms
- Debug complex production issues in distributed systems
Backend Engineering
- Build and maintain backend services and APIs
- Work with data stores (relational and/or NoSQL) to support high‑scale workloads
- Contribute to system design, code reviews, and engineering standards
Infrastructure & Observability
- Collaborate on deployment architecture (cloud or hybrid environments)
- Implement monitoring, logging, and tracing for critical paths
- Improve system visibility and operational readiness
Experience
- 5–8+ years of backend software engineering experience
- Proven experience building high‑throughput, low‑latency systems
- Experience working on switching, routing, or real‑time processing systems (telecom, payments, networking, or similar domains)
Key Competencies
- Technical Skills: Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Java, C++, Rust, or similar)
- Deep understanding of concurrency, multithreading, and asynchronous systems
- Experience with network protocols and system‑level behavior
- Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals
- Experience with databases under high load
- Systems Thinking
- Ability to reason about failure modes, edge cases, and system limits
- Strong debugging and performance tuning skills
- Focus on building resilient, production‑grade systems
Nice to Have
- Experience with telecom switching (e.g., SS7, SIP) or payment switching (e.g., ISO 8583)
- Experience with event‑driven architectures or streaming systems (e.g., Kafka)
- Familiarity with kernel‑level or systems programming concepts
- Experience in regulated or mission‑critical environments