ISTA Personnel Solutions is a dynamic and fast-growing BPO company. We are not a recruitment agency. We partner with international U.S. clients and integrate our staff members directly within our clients' operations. We focus on long-term placements where you contribute directly to the client's success.
We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced AI Engineer to design and build practical AI-powered applications, agents and systems that solve real business problems.
This is a hands-on, build-first role for someone who actively works across the modern AI development ecosystem and can take a business problem or idea from concept through to a working solution.
Depending on the problem, you may build an AI agent, internal application, AI-enabled business system, custom integration or automated workflow. We are therefore looking for someone with broad practical AI development experience, rather than someone whose experience is primarily focused on traditional workflow automation.
You will work with modern Large Language Models (LLMs), AI coding tools, agentic frameworks, APIs and development platforms to rapidly design, build, test and deploy practical AI solutions.
This is not a Machine Learning or AI Research role and does not involve training models. It is an applied engineering role focused on using existing AI technologies to build working business solutions.
Requirements
- Working Hours: Monday – Friday from 14:30pm – 23:00pm South African time (subject to change with daylight savings)
- Public Holidays: This role requires working on South African public holidays (compensation for working South African public holidays in accordance with the BCEA).
- Internet Requirements: A fixed fibre line with a minimum speed of 25 Mbps upload and download, with wired Ethernet capability, is mandatory. Applicants without a fixed fibre line cannot be considered.
- Power Backup: Reliable backup power is required to manage load shedding or power outages. Applicants without adequate backup power cannot be considered.
- Work Environment: Fully remote (applicants must reside in South Africa)
Key Responsibilities
- Take business problems and ideas from concept through to fully working AI-powered solutions.
- Design, build and deploy AI applications, internal tools, AI agents and intelligent business systems.
- Build agentic systems capable of reasoning, using tools, accessing business data and completing multi-step tasks.
- Use modern AI development and coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot or similar to rapidly build and iterate solutions.
- Evaluate different AI models, tools, frameworks and platforms and select the most appropriate technology for each use case.
- Build custom applications and integrations using LLMs, APIs and traditional software development.
- Work with agentic AI frameworks and technologies such as LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, MCP or similar.
- Integrate AI systems with CRMs, databases, messaging platforms, document-generation tools and other internal business systems.
- Build workflow automations using tools such as n8n where automation is the appropriate solution.
- Deploy, test, monitor, debug and continuously improve AI solutions following launch.
- Consider security, reliability, scalability, AI usage costs and ROI when designing solutions.
- Work directly with leadership and business stakeholders to understand problems, recommend technical solutions and independently execute builds.
- Keep up to date with emerging AI technologies and actively explore new tools that could provide practical business value.
Minimum Requirements
- 3–5+ years' professional software engineering, application development or closely related technical experience.
- Demonstrated hands-on experience independently building and deploying AI-powered applications or systems, beyond traditional workflow automation.
- Practical experience building AI agents or agentic systems that use tools, APIs, business data or external systems to perform multi-step tasks.
- Strong practical experience using modern AI development/coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot or similar.
- Practical experience working with leading LLMs such as Claude, OpenAI/GPT, Gemini or similar.
- Experience with agentic frameworks or technologies such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, MCP or similar.
- Strong software development capability in Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript/Node.js.
- Strong experience building and integrating REST APIs and third-party systems.
- Experience with Docker, Git/GitHub and modern application deployment practices.
- Ability to independently assess a business problem, determine the appropriate technical approach and take the solution from concept through to deployment.
- Strong debugging and analytical problem-solving skills, particularly when working with non-deterministic AI systems.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- A genuine interest in emerging AI technologies, with evidence of actively experimenting with and building using new AI tools.
Advantageous Experience:
- Experience building RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) solutions.
- Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) and tool/function calling.
- Experience building full-stack AI-powered applications or internal business tools.
- Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
- Experience implementing human-in-the-loop approval processes within AI systems.
- Experience evaluating different LLMs based on capability, cost and use case.
- Experience working in a fast-moving environment where you have independently owned technical solutions from initial idea through to deployment.
Please note: Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within 14 days of your application, please consider your application unsuccessful.
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