Senior Software Engineer

2 days ago

Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa Open Earth Foundation Remote Full-time

Senior Software Engineer (AI Native): Building Climate Solutions for Cities

Open Earth Foundation is a California-based nonprofit on a mission to create groundbreaking technology that helps combat the climate crisis.

Our climate platforms support cities around the world with data-driven climate planning and delivery.

We’re a diverse, global team working remotely and collaborating with partners worldwide to make real change possible.

With strong funding and a powerhouse team of innovators, we’re ready to tackle big challenges for a resilient Earth for generations to come and we need the planet’s brightest minds to help solve them

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

As an AI Native Senior Software Engineer at Open Earth Foundation, you will ship features and infrastructure for digital climate services and other climate tools at a pace that matches the urgency of the climate crisis. As a strong software engineer who has embraced AI-assisted development as a core part of your workflow: you use tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and similar to write, review, debug and refactor code faster and with higher quality. You combine sharp engineering judgment with AI leverage to move fast without cutting corners. Everything we do is Open Source, shared freely with the world, to maximize the impact of our work.

You will be part of the technical team and work directly with the other technical team members and a variety of team members in the organization from the Product Team.

This position is fully remote and international as our organization works across different time zones.

  • Schedule flexibility is expected with a willingness to collaborate in overlapping core hours for meetings from 8am PST to 11am PST (GMT-8).
  • Availability to work with overlapping hours across U.S., Latin American and European time zones is preferred.
  • Experience with asynchronous remote work and the ability to self-organize tasks is preferred.

Priority will be given to applications submitted by November 15th.

The following requirements describe our ideal candidate. If you don't meet some of the requirements, you're encouraged to apply anyway. Let us know if there is something missing and how we can work together to make it up.

Essential Functions and Specific Duties:

  • Write code for front-end and back-end components of Web applications
  • Write code for data storage systems, such as relational databases
  • Architect systems and components of cloud-native Web applications
  • Identify and integrate Open Source software components into Web applications
  • Deploy custom and off-the-shelf components to cloud services
  • Collaborate with a team of software engineering peers
  • Collaborate with team members from other disciplines such as design, data engineering, product management, and devops

AI-Assisted Development Duties:

  • Daily, proficient use of at least one AI coding tool (Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Windsurf, AWS Kiro etc.)
  • Ability to write effective prompts and context for AI tools to get high-quality code output
  • Good judgment on when AI output is correct, when it needs editing, and when to write code manually
  • Experience crafting project rules, system prompts or custom instructions to guide AI tools in a codebase

Other:

  • Actively participate in team building and culture development activities at Open Earth Foundation
  • Encourage and mentor Open Source contributors to OEF’s projects

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or equivalent technical pursuit, or on-the-job experience
  • 6+ years of work experience as a software developer
  • 3+ shipped projects/products

Interpersonal Skills:

  • Ability to work in an agile software development environment with a mix of data engineers, full-stack developers, product designers and product managers
  • Ability to estimate and track time worked on tasks
  • Communications skills necessary to document and present work
  • Effectively perform asynchronous work with a high degree of self organization and proactive problem solving

Technology Experience & Knowledge:

  • JavaScript/TypeScript
  • NodeJS
  • ReactJS
  • Express
  • PostgreSQL & ORMs
  • Docker & Docker Compose
  • Git
  • Open web standards for application interconnection (OAuth, Webhooks)
  • Kubernetes & AWS

Other Competencies:

  • Use of low-code/no-code, cloud storage and other tools for rapid prototyping
  • Using Linear for project management (or similar tools like Jira)
  • Experience working with micro-service oriented architectures
  • Experience with migration from mono-repository to service-oriented