Principal Software Engineer (AI-Native, 20+ Years Exp.)

About the role

HelloKindred, a staffing specialist in marketing, creative and technology roles, is recruiting a Principal Software Engineer for a client in the global professional services industry. The role is a 3-month contract, hybrid (4 days per week in the office), and calls for a hands-on technical leader with 20+ years of professional software engineering experience who continues writing production code. It is a technical leadership role rather than a management position.

Key responsibilities

• Design and build enterprise-grade software from concept through production, defining architecture across cloud, backend, web, AI and mobile platforms.
• Build intelligent applications powered by Large Language Models, AI agents and modern AI platforms, including native iOS and Android apps and cross-platform solutions with Flutter or similar.
• Mentor senior engineers, influence engineering standards and partner with clients and engineering teams on complex technical challenges.
• Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies, support DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines and production release governance, and collaborate with Product Owners, security, platform, UX, QA and other teams.
• Work in multi-vendor and partner environments with accountability for engineering outcomes.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field (preferred).
• 20+ years of professional software engineering experience, with proven enterprise-scale system design and delivery.
• Expert-level coding skills, staying hands-on and mentoring through collaboration rather than authority.
• Experience with cloud-native applications on Azure, AWS and/or Google Cloud, and with Swift and/or Kotlin.
• Strong stakeholder engagement, Agile/SAFe or hybrid delivery experience, and ability to navigate multi-vendor environments.
• Desirable: multi-agent AI systems, Edge AI, on-device AI, React Native.NET MAUI, DevEx practices, open-source contributions, and engineering platform development.

Required skills

• Modern software architecture, APIs, distributed systems, DevSecOps, CI/CD and secure software engineering.
• LLM platforms, AI agents, RAG, MCP, function calling, prompt engineering, vector databases and AI application evaluation.
• Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) and mobile development (Swift, Kotlin, Flutter).

Candidates must be legally authorised to live and work in South Africa without employer sponsorship. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.