Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer

About Noodle: Noodle is higher education’s leading strategy, services, and technology infrastructure partner on a mission to empower universities to change the world. We build modern digital architectures, deliver life-changing online learning experiences, and grow student recruitment pipelines for the world’s most prestigious academic institutions. By deploying advanced interconnectivity tools, real-time data networks, and intuitive web solutions, Noodle helps global universities remain highly resilient, responsive, and efficient.

Position Overview

We are seeking a deeply technical, product-minded Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer based in South Africa to help architect, scale, and secure our modern AI-powered higher education web applications. In this cross-functional engineering track, you will take complete ownership of features from technical design through to implementation, automated testing, and deployment. You will blend responsive frontend UI creation with robust backend service layers, designing autonomous agentic workflows using Next.js, TypeScript, and Python. This role is highly suited for engineers comfortable managing real-time data streams and utilizing modern AI observability frameworks to optimize system reliability.

Key Responsibilities

• Agentic Web Application Architecture: Design, implement, and maintain scalable full-stack web applications leveraging Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and OpenAI’s Agents SDK templates.
• Backend Service Optimization: Expand and optimize existing Python API frameworks, microservices, and tool-execution data layers utilizing the Flask ecosystem.
• AI User Experience Design: Formulate and deploy advanced AI-driven student interfaces, establishing low-latency conversational mechanics, voice routing engines, and streaming text setups.
• System Integration Management: Bridge application layers with external platforms, including GraphQL backends, AWS Amplify configurations, MongoDB instances, and enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS) using the **LTI standard**.
• Observability & Telemetry Engineering: Track, trace, and debug complex multi-layer production performance bottlenecks leveraging Langfuse, Sentry, and OpenTelemetry.
• Engineering Quality Governance: Enforce rigorous unit and integration automated test strategies, establishing strong standards for documentation clarity, system maintainability, and code reviews.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 5+ years of verified professional software engineering experience executing full-stack web application workflows.
• 2+ years of production-grade history running Next.js and TypeScript inside modern software projects.
• 2+ years of experience engineering backend server frameworks with **Python** (utilizing Flask, FastAPI, or Django).
• Proven baseline proficiency with AI-assisted software engineering platforms (such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to accelerate test creation and debugging tracks.
• Demonstrated capacity to write, tune, and test AI prompts to support dynamic, multi-file software features.
• Location Context: 100% remote-first operational framework open exclusively to qualified software engineers residing and holding legal residency within South Africa. Applicants must maintain permanent local residency throughout employment.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior technical experience building LLM-powered enterprise applications or conversational AI products.
• Familiarity handling document-oriented databases like MongoDB and building queries across GraphQL schemas.
• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or equivalent quantitative scientific fields.

What We Offer

• Highly competitive compensation package calibrated transparently against senior engineering experience and technical testing evaluations.
• Complete work-from-home autonomy, with all essential technical equipment provided on us (including a premium Mac laptop and an **EcoFlow inverter** to safeguard against load-shedding outages).
• 12 weeks of fully paid Parental Leave benefits alongside 20 working days of annual leave and 10 paid national holidays.
• Dedicated medical/RA benefit allowances and monthly home high-speed internet billing stipends.
• Full access to a comprehensive Employee Assistance Program (EAP) alongside an annual education stipend for lifelong learning.
• Opportunities for periodic domestic and international travel to company retreats and corporate office networks in New York.