AI Engineer - REMOTE - R1.0m PA

Ready to take your AI engineering expertise to the next level? This is an opportunity to join a technically driven team building and deploying production-grade AI and machine learning solutions not simply experimenting with the latest models.

You’ll have the opportunity to fine-tune models such as Llama, Mistral and Qwen, build self-hosted inference environments, optimise AI systems for performance and cost, and develop scalable machine learning solutions using modern cloud, containerisation and MLOps practices.

What we are looking for

• 3+ years of experience building and shipping machine learning or AI-powered systems in production
• 7 plus years’ commercial development experience
• Strong Python skills, with hands-on experience using frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar
• Practical experience with large language models - prompting, fine-tuning, RAG, or agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, or custom implementations).
• Hands-on experience training and fine-tuning open-source models (e.g., Llama, Mistral, Qwen) full fine-tuning or parameter-efficient methods (LoRA/QLoRA) and deploying them on your own infrastructure rather than relying solely on hosted APIs.
• Experience standing up self-hosted inference serving on your own infra (e.g., vLLM, TGI, Triton, Ray Serve), including GPU provisioning, batching, and cost/latency optimization
• Solid understanding of ML fundamentals: model evaluation, overfitting, data leakage, and experimentation methodology
• Experience with vector databases and embedding-based retrieval (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, FAISS)
• Comfort working with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes), including GPU-backed compute.
• Familiarity with MLOps practices model versioning, CI/CD for ML, monitoring, and rollback strategies for both hosted and self-hosted models
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: clean code, testing, code review, and API design
• Proficiency working with AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate development, while critically reviewing and validating AI-generated code

Nice to Have

• Experience with model quantization, distillation, or optimization techniques (e.g., GPTQ, AWQ, ONNX) for efficient self-hosted inference
• Background in NLP, computer vision, or recommendation systems.
• Experience with streaming data pipelines (Kafka, Spark) or feature stores.
• Contributions to open-source ML/AI tooling
• Prior experience in a startup or fast-growth environment

Reference Number for this position is GZ61533 which is a Permanent remote position offering a salary of R1000k per annum, negotiable based on experience and ability.

Contact Garth on Sign in to view email or call 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.

Are you ready for a change of scenery? We are a specialist niche recruitment agency. We offer our candidates a wide range of opportunities, ensuring we successfully match the right technology professionals with the right roles.

Do you know a developer or technology specialist looking for a new opportunity? We pay cash for successful referrals!