AI Native Frontend Engineer

About

Lulalend is a FinTech company with a belief in the power of small business, making a difference, building a better solution and striving for excellence. We work hard to empower businesses across South Africa with the funds they need to grow. Lulalend offers small business funding of between R20 000 - R250 000 to businesses that have been in operation for at least 1 year and are seeing a monthly turnover of R40 000. Our online application process is fast, easy, convenient and safe. Apply via our website, get a decision and get access to funding in 24 hours. LulaLend is more than a company. It's a belief in the power of small business, making a difference, building a better solution and striving for excellence. We work hard to empower businesses across South Africa with the funds they need to grow, and we have a great time doing it! We believe small businesses are the key to local economic success and deserve an easy and inspiring lending experience. We know time is money, and our products and services are designed to keep owners moving at the speed of business. We make sure that our funding costs and terms are transparent and understandable.

Overall Purpose

We are building a small innovation pod that converts high-value ideas into production‑ready capabilities fast. You will be the person who makes those capabilities believable, through interfaces that feel polished, trustworthy, and real from day one.

You will own the full frontend surface, working from intent rather than detailed specs, and make independent judgement calls about when something is ready to put in front of stakeholders. There is no senior colleague to escalate to — this is your domain.

The trade‑off is real autonomy, a small high‑trust team, and the opportunity to work at the frontier of AI‑native development where your output velocity will be unlike anything in a conventional engineering environment.

In exchange, you gain genuine autonomy, a position on a small, high‑trust team, and a unique chance to pioneer AI‑native development. Your output velocity in this environment will far surpass what is possible in conventional engineering roles.

Key Responsibilities

• Rapidly build and iterate on interfaces that surface backend capabilities
• Produce production‑credible demos — polished enough to build trust, honest enough to be real
• Maintain a shared design system and reusable UI primitives for the pod
• Implement interaction quality: loading states, error handling, feedback loops
• Integrate directly with APIs built by the backend lead
• Use AI tooling (Cursor, v0, or equivalent) as a core part of your workflow
• Contribute to decisions about when a demo is ready for stakeholder exposure

Experience We’re Looking For

• Senior‑level frontend engineering judgment — able to own a full UI surface independently
• Production experience with a modern component framework (React preferred)
• Demonstrated ability to produce polished, production‑credible UIs quickly
• Active use of AI‑assisted development tooling
• Comfortable working from intent rather than detailed specifications
• Clear instinct for when polish matters and when it does not

Advantageous

• Experience building internal tools, dashboards, or workflow UIs
• Has worked in a small team or startup environment
• Familiarity with design systems or component library maintenance
• Experience in fintech or regulated industries

Our Tech Stack

• Azure
• Snowflake
• DBT
• Python
• SQL
• Hex
• GitHub