Junior Backend Developer

SUMMARY:
Signa Opportunity is recruiting unemployed youth for quality workplace experience through the Youth Employment Service (YES) initiative.
About the YES Initiative
The initiative was launched by the President in 2018 and is a partnership with the government and labour department to collectively devise a national plan to build economic pathways for South Africa’s youth by creating workplace opportunities for South African youth over a period of 12 months.

Position: Junior Backend Developer

Stipend: R 5500.00

Location: Sandton

POSITION INFO:
About the Role
A junior backend developers’ main objective will be to build new client-focused product features, maintain existing products and features, and assist with reporting. They will work closely with IT team members and report to the Head of IT. They will also play an important role in shaping future product development along with the Head of IT, Head of Product, and CEO.

Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end features across verification of APIs and the client portal.
• Assist with defining, publishing, and maintaining API contracts and SDK snippets.
• Help build and maintain supplier connectors (REST/SOAP, queues, webhooks) with retries, back-off, idempotency, and rate limits.
• Model and migrate MySQL schemas for requests, results, pricing, and billing events.
• Participate in CI/CD and deployment workflows
• Support infrastructure configuration
• Follow security and compliance guidelines
• Write tests (unit test and integration tests), investigate issue, and fix bugs.
• Maintain documentation for APIs, features, and internal processes as worked on.
• Help respond to incidents

• South African unemployed youth between the ages of 18 and 34.
• Must not have participated on the YES programme before.
• Matric Certificate (with results).
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or other technical field.
• Working knowledge of at least one backend language (e.g. Java, C#/.NET, SQL, Node.js, Python).
• Familiarity with JavaScript, React or other frontend languages and frameworks.
• Basic understanding of databases: SQL, schema design, indexing, query tuning, backup/restore.
• Familiarity with web fundamentals: HTML5, CSS3, HTTP/TLS, APIs, caching, CDNs, reverse proxy (Apache/Nginx).
• Familiarity with DevOps practices: Git, CI/CD pipelines, test, code review practices.
• Basic Linux administration practices and shell scripting.
• Demonstrable interests in technology (areas like automation, agentic workflows, scripting, databases, APIs, AI tools) evidenced by personal projects, blog posts, articles, research interests, contributions to open-source projects.
• What matters most: Drive, curiosity, and a desire to build great things.