Devops and Sysadmin Software Engineer, AI-enabled (Graduate or Junior)

About Us:

Silvertreebrands builds disruptive, purpose-driven consumer and digital brands. Our power brands include Faithful to Nature, UCOOK, Pet Heaven and SKOON. We focus on building amazing customer experiences that are “Good for you, good for the planet.” We trust our employees with full accountability and autonomy from day one. This unique entrepreneurial and performance-driven culture enables us to achieve executional excellence.

About The Role:

AI is clearly going to dramatically change the way we write (or, don't write) code. In our view, one big impact will be to darmatically increase the importance of the development environment: we can only really take advantage of AI-generated code when the environment enforces good linting, automated test pipelines, coding standards, CI/CD, documentation, etc. So, come and develop your career with expertise that will only become more vital as the fight against AI-generated slop code becomes real.

We're looking for a top recent graduate, OR a junior but high-potential and ambitious junior, to focus on sysadmin and devops processes, plus development environments, across Silvertree brands. You’ll be working closely with senior leadership from the CEO down, our tech and data teams, and our other functions. This is an unparalleled opportunity to see how clever guard rails can be used to bring AI potential to life -- and so allow us to improve processes and customer experiences. 

Given the rapidly changing nature of this area of technology, your learning will mostly come from experimentation, as well as mentoring and discussion with senior engineers in our tech team, rather than formal training.

We have a hybrid working arrangement, with offices in Woodstock in Cape Town, but support flexibility.

Responsibilities:

• Sysadmin: System administration of our private k8s cluster and other systems, primarily linux-based
• Devops pipelines: maintaining and improving CI/CD pipelines in gitlab and local dev setups, including test automation, AI code review, linting and supporting automation
• Development environments: maintaining and improving our one-click local dev environments, including environment and credential management, and scaffolding for effective AI use
• Cybersecurity: maintaining and improving credential and secret management, reviewing cybersecurity controls and penetration testing
• AI: use tools effectively to get more done, more reliably and with more fun
• Communication: Participate and contribute in tech meetings as well as sprint planning sessions.

Our Tech Stack:

• E-commerce backend: Magento 2 + GraphQL for some services, along with Node.js (Typescript) elsewhere, and Apollo server with GraphQL as glue
• Frontend: React.js
• Collaboration: JIRA, Slack, Notion
• Development: Cursor, Gitlab, k8s CI/CD
• Data and analytics: BigQuery, PowerBI
• Automation, AI: n8n, OpenAI and others, and to be honest, Google Sheets

Requirements:

• For graduates, a relevant bachelors or higher degree from strong university; for experienced hire, 1-3 years in a professionally-run team
• Proven experience with linux system administration
• Proven experimentation with AI tools
• Experience using modern development processes (e.g., git, APIs, etc), whether in your academic background, freelance work, or personal projects
• Super organised, excited about up-to-date documentation and databases
• Beneficial: experience with k8s and/or ecommerce

Our Offer:

• Salary in range R25-40k. (Note: candidates with relevant experience may be considered at higher salaries).
• Young, fast-moving culture, with dedicated and creative colleagues.
• Compelling staff discounts on group brands, team bonus structure, and retirement funding.