Senior AI LLM Engineer – Sandton – R1.2m PA
e-Merge Recruitment
Job description
Build what’s next in AI.
Join an innovative technology environment focused on developing intelligent, AI-powered conversational solutions that are shaping the future of how people interact with technology.
This is a hands-on opportunity to work across LLMs, voice agents, automated testing, AI coding tools, and modern software development practices. You’ll take on complex technical challenges, contribute to solution design, and help turn ambitious AI concepts into scalable, production-ready solutions.
For a Senior AI Engineer who enjoys solving challenging problems, working with emerging technology, and having a meaningful impact on technical direction, this is an opportunity to step into a role where your expertise can make a real difference.
Must-Have Skills & Experience
- 5+ years engineering; 2+ years applied LLM / speech AI in production
- Strong Python (APIs, typing/validation, testing, packaging)
- OpenAI / Azure OpenAI (chat, structured outputs, batch patterns)
- Azure messaging, storage, and SQL-backed services
- Proven ownership of ambiguous, multi-system features
Strong Advantages
- Experience with Cursor, Claude, or similar AI coding assistants
- Voice agent stacks; latency, barge-in, end pointing awareness
- Speech ML in production (PyTorch, Whisper, diarization, ONNX, GPU Docker)
- vLLM / guided decoding; Kubernetes worker patterns
- Contact-centre QA or collections domain
- SQLAlchemy / Azure SQL; IaC awareness or strong infra collaboration
Responsibilities
- Build and harden real-time voice agents: modular prompts, multi-assistant flows, tool-calling, webhooks, telephony/operational concerns
- Improve automated QA pipelines: VAD, diarization, language gating, transcription, alignment/attribution, LLM scorecard scoring
- Implement structured LLM pipelines (schemas, batching, failure handling, score recalculation)
- Own features in Azure Functions / Kubernetes workers: queue consumers, artifact pipelines, SQL integrations
- Contribute to post-call intelligence features such as outcome scoring, summary generation, and structured data extraction
- Expand and maintain evaluation suites (scenarios, LLM-as-judge, CI regression)
- Contribute to email/WhatsApp agent work with reuse of tools, outcomes, and observability
Reference Number for this position is GZ61523 which is a Permanent position based in Sandton offering a salary of R1.2m per annum, negotiable based on experience and ability.
Contact Garth on garthz@e-merge.co.za or call 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.
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