Engineering

Founding Engineer

The Local Agency·Cape Town, Western Cape, south-africa·Permanent·Contract
EngineeringdirectorPermanentContract
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The Local Agency is looking for an entrepreneurial Founding Engineer to lead the development of the TLA Creator Intelligence Platform, known as TLA CIP. TLA CIP is being developed as a decision and reporting platform for the African creator economy. It will help brands and agencies evaluate creators, compare performance, create defensible shortlists and produce more credible campaign reporting. We are looking for more than a developer who can complete a predefined list of tasks. We need a technical builder who can work closely with the founder, challenge assumptions, shape the product architecture and turn an ambitious product vision into a practical working MVP. The successful candidate will take technical ownership of the platform’s first build and have the opportunity to grow into a long-term technical leadership, technical co-founder or CTO position. This is an early-stage, equity-led opportunity. It is best suited to someone who wants to help build and own a meaningful technology company rather than join a conventional salaried development role. The initial MVP The first version of TLA CIP will focus on a defined business-to-business workflow, including: Creator profiles and permissioned data collection.Manual and API-assisted data ingestion.Standardised creator and campaign information.Comparable creator scorecards.Creator discovery and shortlist creation.Campaign-performance tracking.Professional client-report exports.Secure user, creator and administrative access.A scalable technical foundation for future data and intelligence products.Future product layers may include local pricing benchmarks, audience-fit and brand-affinity signals, creator-facing analytics, affiliate intelligence and wider African creator-market insights. The founding engineer will help determine what should and should not be included in the first build. Key responsibilities: Translate the existing product brief and business requirements into a clear technical roadmap.Define the MVP architecture, technology stack and data model.Build and launch the first functional version of TLA CIP.Develop secure front-end, back-end and database functionality.Design creator, agency, brand and administrative user workflows.Build manual-assisted processes before introducing unnecessary automation.Assess and implement suitable social-platform or third-party data integrations.Establish appropriate data-permission, privacy and security practices.Create technical documentation and maintain clean, scalable code.Identify technical risks, platform dependencies and API limitations.Work directly with the founder on product priorities and user feedback.Participate in customer discovery and early-product demonstrations.Support future recruitment and management of additional developers.Take long-term ownership of the platform’s technical direction.The person we are looking for You are comfortable operating in the uncertainty of an early-stage product. You can take a business problem, ask the right questions and turn it into a simple technical solution. You understand that the objective is not to build the most complicated platformit is to launch the smallest credible product that customers will use and pay for. You should be able to operate independently while communicating technical decisions clearly to a non-technical founding team.

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At a glance

Company

The Local Agency

Location

Cape Town, Western Cape, south-africa

Employment

Permanent

Work style

Contract

Experience

director

Valid until

Not specified

Created

October 30, 2026

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