SUMMARY:
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POSITION INFO:
ENVIRONMENT:
One of South Africa's leading insurance providers is looking for a Developer Experience Engineer to join their team. They are building a Platform Engineering practice, and developer experience is central to that effort. They are implementing Backstage as their internal developer portal, creating templates for new services, and building the self-service capabilities that let developers focus on building rather than fighting infrastructure. This role is about making the platform so good that teams actually want to use it.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Implement and maintain Backstage as their internal developer portal
- Build the service catalogue so developers can discover what exists and who owns it
- Create golden path templates: "start a new API service" should take 5 minutes, not 5 days
- Design software templates that enforce their standards while staying flexible
- Write documentation that developers actually read (yes, it's possible)
- Build self-service capabilities: environment provisioning, secrets management, config updates
- Implement TechDocs so documentation lives with code and stays current
- Create developer productivity dashboards and track metrics that matter
- Gather feedback from developers and turn complaints into improvements
- Run enablement sessions and training when they roll out new capabilities
- Contribute to software development and platform engineering tasks, including coding, debugging, and optimisation where it improves developer experience outcomes.
- Build and maintain internal tools, scripts, and services that enhance developer productivity and reduce friction.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to write and review production-quality code aligned to platform standards and best practices.
- Support integration and automation efforts across the platform, contributing code where required to enable self-service capabilities.
- Assist with refactoring and improving existing systems and tooling to align with modern engineering practices.
- Participate in code reviews, testing, and continuous improvement initiatives within the platform engineering team.
REQUIREMENTS:
What You Bring
- You've worked on internal developer tools or platforms before. You understand the unique challenges
- 3+ years software development experience
- Backstage experience or similar developer portal platforms (Port, Cortex, OpsLevel)
- Strong TypeScript and React skills (Backstage frontend is React)
- You understand developer workflows because you've been a developer
- Technical writing skills. You can explain complex things simply
- Empathy for developer experience. You notice friction that others accept as normal
Education
- Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Relevant certifications in cloud platforms, DevOps, or developer tooling (Azure preferred) will be advantageous.
- Equivalent practical experience improving developer workflows, tooling, and platform adoption will also be considered.
Nice to Have
- Experience building CLI tools or VS Code extensions
- Knowledge of the Backstage plugin ecosystem
- Experience measuring developer productivity (DORA metrics, developer surveys)
- Training or facilitation experience
- You've evangelised platform adoption to sceptical teams
