TMA Proactive Partners - Senior Full Stack Engineer

Full Stack Developer is needed in Cape Town, South Africa.

Client: TMA Proactive Partners

Location: Cape Town, WC, za

Contract: Freelance

Job Description

We are recruiting on behalf of a growing international digital product and technology studio that partners with ambitious companies and startup teams to build modern, high-quality digital products and platforms. The team works across product, design, and engineering in a collaborative, remote-first environment, specializing in complex digital platforms, SaaS products, and increasingly AI-enabled applications and tools. They are looking for a Senior Software Developer who is technically strong, commercially minded, and comfortable taking ownership across the development lifecycle. This is a broadly defined role requiring expertise in Java and capability in full-stack development, contributing to architecture, backend development, frontend implementation, cloud deployment, and technical problem-solving.

Requirements

You are likely to perform well in this environment if you:

• Have deep hands-on expertise in Java and strong experience with Spring Boot.
• Are comfortable working across backend and frontend development.
• Can work effectively with Angular and modern web technologies.
• Think beyond individual tickets and understand the broader product and business problem.
• Are able to take a feature or technical problem from concept through to production.
• Are resourceful and able to solve problems without needing highly prescriptive requirements.
• Have strong engineering judgement and know when to optimise for speed, scalability, maintainability, or simplicity.
• Enjoy working in smaller, fast-moving product teams.
• Are comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities.
• Ask good questions and proactively identify risks, gaps, and opportunities.
• Communicate clearly with engineers, designers, product teams, and business stakeholders.
• Take ownership rather than waiting for detailed instruction.
• Care deeply about the quality and maintainability of the systems you build.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend applications using Java and Spring Boot.
• Develop and enhance modern frontend applications using Angular, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
• Contribute across the full software development lifecycle, from early technical discovery through to deployment and production support.
• Design and implement clean, maintainable, and scalable software solutions.
• Build and maintain APIs, services, and application integrations.
• Containerise and manage applications using Docker.
• Support cloud-based deployments, primarily within Microsoft Azure environments.
• Collaborate with product managers and designers to translate product requirements into technical solutions.
• Contribute to feature definition, technical feasibility discussions, and product architecture.
• Integrate AI capabilities, models, and APIs into digital products where appropriate.
• Investigate performance issues, production problems, and technical bottlenecks.
• Conduct code reviews and contribute to engineering best practices.
• Maintain high standards of code quality, testing, and technical documentation.
• Identify opportunities to improve architecture, development processes, and engineering tooling.
• Contribute to technical roadmap and architectural decisions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience, with substantial hands-on backend development experience.
• Strong commercial experience with Java.
• Strong experience with Spring Boot.
• Experience developing modern web applications.
• Working knowledge of Angular or another modern single-page application framework.
• Strong understanding of:
• JavaScript
• HTML
• CSS
• REST APIs
• Object-oriented development
• Software architecture
• Clean code principles
• Experience using Git within professional development environments.
• Practical experience with Docker and containerised applications.
• Experience with standard Java development tooling such as Maven and IntelliJ.
• Understanding of scalable application architecture and modern software engineering practices.
• Experience working with development and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence or equivalent.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Fluent professional English.
• Formal training or a degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related technical discipline, or demonstrably equivalent professional experience.
• Must be eligible to work in South Africa.

Advantageous Experience

Additional value would include experience with:

• Microsoft Azure or another major cloud platform.
• SaaS products or enterprise software platforms.
• AI-enabled products.
• Integrating LLMs, AI models or AI APIs into production applications.
• Webflow or similar web development/design platforms.
• CI/CD pipelines and automated deployments.
• Cloud-native application architecture.
• Startup, scale-up or product studio environments.
• Working directly with product teams from early concept through to delivery.

Additional Information

Cape Town-based candidates are particularly welcome, as the team values occasional in-person collaboration, although the role operates remotely. Please submit your CV together with relevant links to GitHub.