Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

Job Description — Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

Location: In-Office at Babylonstoren, Klapmuts, South Africa

Type: Full-time

About Candide

Candide is an AI-first tech company based at Babylonstoren in Franschhoek and in the UK, building the digital products behind some of the world's most celebrated hospitality and lifestyle estates, including Babylonstoren, The Newt in Somerset, Vignamaggio, and others.

Our office sits on the beautiful Babylonstoren estate, surrounded by gardens, mountains, and farm-to-table food. We design, build and maintain eCommerce platforms, mobile apps, admissions and membership systems, booking engines, and brochure websites. Our engineering team is small but high-impact, working across a portfolio of luxury brands that people genuinely love.

We embrace AI as a core part of how we work — from code generation and review, to automating workflows and augmenting decision-making. We believe engineers who know how to leverage AI effectively are force multipliers, and we actively invest in tools and practices that make this possible.

Role Description

We're looking for a Senior Full Stack Software Engineer to take ownership of key systems across our platform. You'll work end-to-end, from designing GraphQL schemas and building backend services in NestJS and Express, to shipping frontend features in Angular and React. You'll also contribute to our React Native mobile apps that serve multiple estates.

This is a hands-on technical role, but you'll also help shape how we build software. You'll mentor other engineers, contribute to architectural decisions, and help us scale our platform as our portfolio of estates grows. Ideal for someone who thrives in a multi-product environment and enjoys the challenge of working across different codebases and domains.

You don't need to be an expert in everything listed here, we value strong fundamentals, good judgement, and the ability to pick things up quickly across unfamiliar codebases.

Why This Role?

● Work across a diverse portfolio of prestigious international brands

● Shape the technical direction of a growing platform

● AI-first engineering culture — we invest in AI tooling and expect you to use it to your advantage

● Small team, big impact — your work is visible and meaningful

Perks & Benefits

● Daily catered lunch

● Flexible working hours — core hours are 9am to 3pm

● Choice of equipment (most of us use Apple)

● Generous training and conference budget

● 30% discount at Babylonstoren — online shop, hotel, spa, and farm shops

● Free admission to Babylonstoren and The Newt in Somerset for you, your friends, and family

● Access to Babylonstoren's recreation centre, gym, swimming pool, and studios

● Quarterly socials and team building

Key Responsibilities

● Design, build and maintain features across our eCommerce platform, admissions services, and mobile apps

● Architect and implement GraphQL APIs, including federated schemas using Apollo Gateway

● Work across both Angular and React frontends, contributing to admin dashboards and customer-facing applications

● Build and improve backend services in TypeScript/Node.js using NestJS and Express

● Contribute to our React Native mobile apps

● Manage and optimise MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, including data modelling and query performance

● Work with GCP infrastructure — Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage

● Ensure systems are production-ready, resilient, and built for high availability, including monitoring, alerting, and graceful failure handling

● Leverage AI tools and assistants to accelerate development, improve code quality, and solve problems more effectively

● Participate in code reviews and help establish engineering standards

● Mentor intermediate and junior developers

● Collaborate with a distributed team across South Africa and the UK

What We're Looking For

● 5+ years of professional full stack development experience

● Strong proficiency in TypeScript and Node.js

● Solid experience with GraphQL — schema design, resolvers, and API architecture

● Experience with at least one of Angular or React, and willingness to work across both

● Strong relational database skills (MySQL and/or PostgreSQL)

● Experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably Google Cloud Platform

● Proven experience building and operating production-ready systems at scale, with a strong focus on reliability, observability, and high availability

● Comfortable working across multiple codebases and services

● Proactive use of AI tools (e.g. Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor) in your development workflow, we expect engineers to use AI to move faster, not as a crutch but as a multiplier

● Fluent in Afrikaans and English

● Experience with NestJS or Apollo Federation

● Familiarity with React Native or cross-platform mobile development

● Experience in eCommerce — payment integrations (Stripe, Stitch), order management, inventory systems

● Exposure to event-driven architectures (Pub/Sub, message queues)

● Experience with Algolia, Firebase, or headless CMS platforms (Statamic, Strapi)

● Background working in a multi-brand or multi-tenant environment

● Experience designing systems for high uptime, including load balancing, failover strategies, and zero-downtime deployments

● Takes ownership and sees things through to completion

● Strong communicator who can work effectively across time zones

● Enjoys mentoring and lifting up the engineers around them

● Comfortable with ambiguity and able to make pragmatic technical decisions

● Curious and always looking to improve how things are built

● Embraces AI as a natural part of the engineering workflow