Elasticsearch Jobs in South Africa.
All active Elasticsearch roles based in South Africa.
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We’re building the place where the right person meets the right opportunity. Not by showing more, but by showing better. This is a role for an engineer who cares as much about the customer’s problem as they do about their craft.
Remote · South Africa | Full-time | Senior · 7+ years | Squad of 4 engineers
Mission
OfferZen exists to help South African tech talent build an awesome future by connecting them to the right teams where they can do their best work. Our next big bet, Reduce the Noise, is all about making OfferZen the place where quality wins. It’s not a volume game, it’s a value game.
“We want to make OfferZen the place where you find the right person to hire, or where you find the right job. Not more. Better.”
You’ll be building marketplace features, AI-powered tools (internally and externally), and internal tooling that makes this vision real. Your work will be felt by real candidates and real hiring companies every day.
Outcomes
- Design, build, and ship meaningful fullstack features every week across front-end and back-end.
- Act as an AI engineer on designated projects, building AI-powered features using tools and frameworks like OpenAI and Anthropic APIs.
- Own solutions end-to-end: from design and scoping through to delivery and post-ship iteration.
- Debug production issues, maintain a stable marketplace, and advocate for quality, performance, and security.
- Lead by example in AI-enabled engineering, using tools like Cursor and V0 to move faster without cutting corners.
- Mentor junior and intermediate engineers through pairing, code review, and honest feedback.
- Participate in Frontend and Backend Guilds, contributing to our component library, architecture, and testing standards.
- Document architectural decisions so new engineers can hit the ground running.
- Contribute to the technical roadmap by spotting areas to improve and making the case for them.
Tech Stack
Ruby on Rails | React | Next.js | MongoDB | PostgreSQL | ElasticSearch | Redis | AWS
We use Ruby on Rails on the backend, but if you’re a strong JS fullstack engineer, that’s absolutely fine. We’ll give you the time and space to get up to speed on Ruby. With AI, you don’t need to be a syntax expert.
Competencies
- 7+ years of production software engineering experience.
- Strong across the full stack, with a frontend bias. You have a solid grasp of modern frontend architecture, patterns, and what it takes to build a great user experience.
- 5+ years working with React (or similar) in a production environment.
- Product-minded: you think about the customer problem, not just the implementation.
- Strong instincts around patterns, responsibility separation, data modelling, and component-oriented design.
- You write unit tests, document your decisions, and write code that others can confidently build on.
- Experience with MongoDB and/or PostgreSQL.
- High confidence, low ego. You’ll back your opinions with data, but hold them loosely.
- You communicate proactively, unblock others, and make those around you better.
AI Fluency: The 4 Ds. We expect all senior engineers to be genuine practitioners of AI-enabled engineering, not just curious about it:
- Delegation: Know which tasks AI can do better or faster, and hand them off confidently.
- Description: Write precise, effective prompts that get the output you actually need.
- Discernment: Critically evaluate AI output. Catch what’s wrong, keep what’s right.
- Diligence: Use AI responsibly, ethically, and securely every time.
Background and personality
- 7+ years experience in software development.
- Used to working in small teams.
- Good communication skills.
- Driven by learning and continuously striving towards self-improvement.
- High confidence, low ego.
- Capable of backing opinions and decisions with data.
- Driven to work hard to achieve a high level of personal execution.
- Attention to detail.
What it's like to work here
We love to do fun stuff together. We are focused on building a connected tribe and a sense of belonging. We value unique and diverse approaches and ensure we create opportunities to share and learn from each other. We have regular online events, show and tells and a book club as well as regional and annual off-site events.
We're dedicated to authenticity: We treat people as people, caring personally and speaking openly. We foster low-ego behaviour - we own our mistakes as well as our victories. We're never about blame. We're always about honesty, learning and continuous improvement. We ensure lots of transparency and visibility. From OKRs and strategy to analytics and company performance numbers, it's all available for you to see and understand.
We're passionate about learning and levelling up: Everyone at OfferZen strives for a growth mindset. We read books, listen to podcasts, share expertise obsessively, then take on hard challenges with smart guidance and support. When things go wrong, we look for the learning and how to improve.
We’re all about balance: We believe that maintaining a healthy balance between home and work is the key to feeling happier and more productive. We work fully remote and also offer 24 days of leave a year which are available to use from the time you start.
*This role can be based locally or remotely - we welcome all applicants based in South Africa.
Ready to apply?
Apply to OfferZen
Search Software Engineer (Back-end)
Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Software Engineer (Search) to join our team. We are a young, dynamic, hyper-growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us!
Think you’ve been challenged before? Think again!
- Scale: Over 4 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com. Show them what you can do.
- Learn: We work with the best of the best. Code alongside industry leaders and up-skill in record time.
- Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com, and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance.
Who’s who in the tech space
This position reports to the respective team's manager.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it:
As a Software Engineer, you will be someone whose expertise directly translates into developing robust software in the e-commerce domain. You will have the opportunity to implement best practices to improve existing software and participate in the development of new features. While we don't promote after-hours work as part of the regular workday, we run a 24/7 business with the need to keep systems up and running. Software Engineers are expected to provide after-hours support on a rotational basis to resolve critical system issues if needed.
The role is focused on maintaining our search stack. We are currently in the process of transitioning from Elasticsearch to Vertex AI Search, so experience with any of those would be a bonus, but not a necessity. Experience with any kind of search technology (Solr, Algolia) is relevant. Takealot runs mostly on Python, but experience in any of the mainstream backend languages (Python, Java or Go) is a plus.
- Design and build solutions to assist our business users and improve customer experience
- Architect and design solutions with your team
- Develop code, making major improvements to non-functional areas
- Develop high-quality production code for work of high complexity and scale
- Utilize and improve functional and non-functional testing practices
- Champion, challenge, and iterate on best practices within engineering
- Design solutions for complex problems with difficult decision trade-offs, typically system or domain-wide
- Participate in and collaborate on architecture proposals across engineering
- Support alignment of architecture across the organisation
- Respond to and resolve bugs in production for systems in your division
- Respond to alerts and support incident response within your division
- Investigate and drive the resolution of issues that impact multiple teams
- Support, challenge existing, and define new engineering processes and directives
- Review and contribute fixes and content to internal documentation
- React to technology trends, identifying risks and opportunities for your division's technologies, systems, and domains
- Share knowledge through blog posts, tech talks, and workshops across engineering
- Contribute to discussions and decisions in the division
- Challenge others to always produce work of the highest quality
- REST and RPC API implementation and maintenance (using Python)
- Develop and maintain automation tests
- Liaise with various internal stakeholders to discuss project requirements, progress, etc.
The skills we need:
- Solutions-oriented, can-do attitude, and high energy
- Strong analytical and critical thinking, using data to inform decisions
- Ability to dis-aggregate and structure solutions to ambiguous problems
- Solid quantitative skills
- Capability to present ideas succinctly, in writing and verbally
- Versatile and with the appetite to learn by doing
Qualifications & Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree or an Advanced Diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
- 5 to 10 years in a software development role
- Experience with search technologies (Elasticsearch, Vertex AI Search, Solr, Algolia, or any other major third party provider)
- A thorough understanding of computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
- Experience in writing robust, efficient production code
- Proficient in a strongly typed open source language such as Python, Java, Golang, etc
- Exposure to RESTful APIs and web services.
- Experience with SQL database systems
- Experience with development in a Linux environment
Experience in the following will be advantageous:
- Familiarity with microservices architecture
- Experience working in an Agile environment
- MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL
- Memcached, Redis
- Message Brokers, Queues, and PubSub systems (e.g., Kafka and RabbitMQ)
- Containerisation (e.g., Docker)
- Orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes)
- GitHub, Travis CI, Jenkins
- AWS, GCP, Azure
- JavaScript, React, jQuery
Let’s talk about life @ Takealot Group
- The power is in your hands: We offer a market-related Total Remuneration Package that allows full flexibility according to your needs. Go on, be the master of your own destiny.
- No doors: We aren’t fans of stuffy offices or siloed work environments. See someone you like, high-five, collab, and make something great.
- Remote working: Enjoy the flexibility of working from home while having the option for in-office interactions. Takealot.com provides a fully remote setup with the choice to visit the office to relish in those water cooler moments when desired.
- Mentorship programme: We aren’t kidding when we say the people with the best people win. Now’s your chance to be one of the best by learning from the best.
- Naspers Tech Community & Online Learning: Share ideas and grow with global industry leaders who are all just a Slack message away. Love to learn? Up-skill with free access to courses on MyAcademy, Udacity, Coursera, and more.
- Good times: Get to know the other extraordinary minds at takealot.com during regular social events and out-of-office activities (think hikes, think mini golf, think good times).
- Staff discount: Takealotmore subscriptions and millions of products across 28 departments. What more could you ask for?
- Birthday leave: Cake Day all the way. Enjoy your day off - you deserve it.
- Right tools, right job: Mac or Linux, two monitors or one. Whatever your preference, you’ll work on the latest tech, off the latest tech.
- Help when you need it most: Confidential counselling, legal support, and financial guidance, anytime, anywhere.
- Tech stack (for days): ReactJS, Python, Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Google Cloud, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes, and all things machine learning. If you build it, they will come.
- Free parking: No more 5km fun runs to your desk (unless you want to).
Like what you see?
If you meet the above, you are an Extraordinary Mind. Apply today!!
Takealot Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applicants from previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities will be given preference.
Ready to apply?
Apply to takealot.com