Cape Town: Software Implementation and Deployment Engineer – Remote posted by DataFin Recruitment

ENVIRONMENT:

A leading AI software company seeks a Software Implementation and Deployment Engineer to join their growing team. The role combines ownership of customer-hosted deployments with responsibility for backend and deployment architecture. The primary focus is deploying their customer-hosted software in client environments, taking end-to-end technical ownership. Responsibilities include working with clients to design suitable deployment architectures, configuring cloud infrastructure, integrating systems, supporting authentication and networking, and resolving deployment and runtime issues. The role may also involve hands-on support, including limited scripting or automation for customer-specific needs. The secondary focus is internal platform engineering, contributing to backend improvements, deployment and release automation, migration planning, and operational reliability. Ensuring secure, resilient backend design and consistent deployment standards is a key responsibility.

DUTIES:

Customer Focus Implementation and Deployment

• Take end-to-end technical ownership of the deployment success of the customer-hosted software component across cloud and on-premises environments. Involvement will range from architecture discussions only to doing full implementations.
• Work directly with the customers technical stakeholders to assess infrastructure requirements and constraints, design deployment architectures, and guide implementations through to successful production rollout.
• Support integration of the customer-hosted component with customer systems and services, including identity providers, integration to core applications and orchestration.
• Develop and apply deployment automation, configuration scripts, and tooling to support consistent, repeatable customer installations and upgrades.
• Provide limited bespoke scripting or configuration to accommodate customer-specific requirements or environmental constraints where necessary.
• Support customer upgrade and migration activities, including coordination, validation, and issue resolution during version transitions.

Internal Focus Platform and Deployment Engineering

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of backend and deployment architecture to improve reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
• Design, maintain, and improve deployment and release processes, including automation and tooling used for both internal and customer-hosted environments.
• Collaborate with internal engineering teams to diagnose and resolve backend, deployment, and operational issues.
• Help keep the backend technology stack current by evaluating and adopting improvements to frameworks, tooling, and deployment practices where appropriate.
• Embed security and vulnerability management practices into backend design, deployment workflows, and operational processes.

REQUIREMENTS:

Required Skills & Experience

Education:

• Bachelors in computer science, or equivalent infrastructure and training/experience
• Cloud certification with at least one cloud provider

Essential Client Engagement Skills:

• Ability to engage confidently and professionally with customer technical stakeholders, acting as a trusted advisor throughout implementation and deployment activities.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts, constraints, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• A consultative approach to customer interactions, balancing customer requirements with platform standards, security considerations, and long-term maintainability.
• Proven ability to build and maintain trust with customers by taking ownership of issues, setting realistic expectations, and delivering reliable outcomes.
• Comfortable operating in customer-priority environments, demonstrating sound judgement when managing competing demands, escalations, and time-sensitive deployment activities.

Essential Backend, Containerization & Data:

• Proficient with Docker, including multi-stage builds, image optimization, Docker Compose, and Docker Swarm.
• Experience deploying and maintaining Kubernetes clusters, including cluster configuration, workload deployment, and ongoing maintenance.
• Strong experience with MongoDB, including setup, configuration, indexing strategies, and aggregation pipelines. Knowledge of MongoDB Atlas and self-managed, deployments is required.
• Solid understanding of RESTful API design, including proper use of HTTP methods, status codes, validation, and error handling.
• Hands-on experience implementing authentication and authorization mechanisms such as NextAuth/Auth.js, OAuth 2.0, JWTs, and session-based authentication.
• Skilled in designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar tools for automated builds, testing, and deployments.

Cloud Platforms & Architecture:

• Hands-on experience deploying and operating applications on modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture concepts including multi-region deployments, load balancing, VPCs, networking (VPC peering, subnets, firewalls), containerized workloads, serverless deployments (e.g., Cloud Run, ECS, Container Apps), and container registries.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform to enable automated, repeatable, and version-controlled provisioning of cloud and network resources.
• Certifications in AWS, GCP, or Azure are beneficial and demonstrate verified cloud expertise.

Networking, Security, Operating Systems & System Administration:

• Strong hands-on experience with Linux and Windows environments, including server administration for applications and containerized deployments.
• Comfortable working extensively in a terminal and performing troubleshooting and configuration tasks in both OS environments.
• Experience configuring and managing firewalls, VPNs, load balancers, SSL certificates, and storage/shared volumes for internal and customer-hosted deployments.

Problem Solving & Troubleshooting:

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to diagnose and resolve complex backend, infrastructure, networking, and deployment issues efficiently.

Documentation:

• Ability to create clear and accurate architecture diagrams and documentation at multiple levels of detail, from high-level conceptual overviews for non-technical stakeholders to detailed diagrams suitable for enterprise architecture reviews.

Platform Architecture Component:

• Platform App Main web application for Digital Twin creation and interaction; SaaS platform.
• Dashboard App Analytics, data visualization, and Digital Twin management; hosted by the customer.
• Admin App Administration panel for system configuration.
• Shared Packages Database models, UI components, utilities, and ML engine.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend Technologies Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI.
• Backend Technologies Next.js API Routes, NextAuth, Mongoose ODM.
• Database MongoDB.
• Internal Infrastructure Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud Build), Docker, GitHub Actions.
• Typical Customer Infrastructure AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises server implementations, Tier 1, HA, MR.
• Operating Systems Mostly Linux-based server operating systems across customer-hosted and cloud environments.
• Monitoring Sentry.

ATTRIBUTES:

• Excellent verbal and written communication with clear technical articulation
• Ability to work autonomously and drive features end-to-end
• Collaborative mindset and openness to feedback
• Comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-moving environment
• Proactive problem-solving and ability to propose design alternatives