Hire LLM developers · Johannesburg
Hire LLM and RAG developers in Johannesburg
Mobile-first, low-bandwidth products with mobile money built in, from a senior team on overlapping hours.
Hire senior LLM developers from Clarigo Infotech who have built and run generative AI in production: RAG search, assistants, agents and AI features inside real products. They work across OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and open-source models, and care about evaluation, guardrails and cost. Rates are typically $25 to $49 per hour, and you own all the code.
South African companies most often hire us for fintech, healthcare software and AI automation.
10+
Years of delivery
600+
Projects delivered
20+
Countries served
25-30
Days to a live MVP
Get a free consultation
Tell us what you need. A senior engineer replies within one working day.
Mobile-first and built for real conditions
African businesses need products that work on any phone and any connection, with mobile money and local payments built in.
Works on any connection
Lightweight apps and sites that stay fast on slow networks and older phones.
Mobile money and local payments
M-Pesa, Flutterwave, Paystack and card payments integrated.
Overlapping hours
Two and a half to four and a half hours from India, so most of the day overlaps.
Cost-effective delivery
Senior engineers at offshore rates with full code ownership.
What our LLM developers do
RAG and AI search
Answer questions from your documents and data, with citations.
AI agents
Agents that use tools and take actions in your systems, with clear limits.
LLM features in your product
Summaries, drafting, classification and chat built into your app.
Evaluation and testing
Test sets and automated checks that measure answer quality.
Guardrails and privacy
PII masking, content filters and permission-aware retrieval.
Cost optimisation
Model routing, caching and prompt design to control spend.
What to expect when you hire
How we vet developers
Every developer has shipped LLM features to real users and passes a practical review covering retrieval design, prompt and tool design, evaluation and production monitoring.
How they work with you
Your developer joins your tools and stand-ups, shares evaluation results regularly and has a named lead at Clarigo for support and cover.
Remote, but close to Johannesburg
Time-zone overlap
South Africa is three and a half hours behind India, so our working days overlap for most of your morning and early afternoon.
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)
We design to POPIA's conditions for lawful processing: purpose limits, security safeguards and data-subject access, with data hosted in South African cloud regions when required. We sign NDAs before work starts.
Billing
Invoices in South African rand (ZAR) or US dollars. Typical senior rates are $25 to $49 (USD) per hour, or a fixed price for a defined scope.
Where we help Johannesburg businesses most
Johannesburg and Sandton companies in finance and insurance use us for platforms, integrations and AI automation, designed to POPIA.
Mining
Mines invest in safety, monitoring and automation systems. Add experienced developers without a long hiring process.
Financial services
Banks and insurers lead in mobile and digital channels. Our developers have built products for this sector and join your team quickly.
Retail
National chains expand e-commerce and loyalty programmes. Senior engineers who understand this sector's systems and data.
Tourism and wine
Operators and estates sell to international visitors online. Add experienced developers without a long hiring process.
How the hours line up
Our team's hours, in Johannesburg time
06:30–16:00
Monday to Friday
Overlap with your working day
09:00–16:00
About 7 hours every day
Daily stand-up
09:30
Johannesburg time, plus written updates every evening
Built for how Johannesburg works
Languages
Local payments
Data hosting
AWS Africa (Cape Town), Google Cloud africa-south1 (Johannesburg) and Azure South Africa North, in your own cloud account, so data stays where your rules require.
Choose how you work with us
Dedicated developer
A full-time senior engineer who works only on your product, inside your tools and stand-ups.
Best for ongoing product work
Dedicated team
A small pod (for example 2 engineers, a designer and a project lead) that owns a product end to end.
Best for building a new product
Fixed-scope project
A clear scope, timeline and price, such as an MVP live in 25 to 30 days.
Best for a defined first version
How it works
1. Tell us what you need
Share the role, skills, time zone and how long you need the developers. Free, no commitment.
2. Meet your developers
Within days we introduce senior engineers matched to your stack. Interview them before you decide.
3. Start with a trial sprint
Begin with a short paid sprint so you can judge code quality, communication and speed.
4. Scale up or down
Add or remove developers as your roadmap changes. You keep full ownership of all code.
See what we've built
Try it yourself, free
Free browser tools from our team. No sign-up needed.
Hire LLM and RAG developers: questions from Johannesburg
Do you work with companies in Johannesburg?+
Yes. Clarigo Infotech works with companies across Johannesburg, including Johannesburg, Sandton, Pretoria, as part of clients in 20+ countries. South African companies most often hire us for fintech, healthcare software and AI automation. We work remotely from India with one in-house team.
What time-zone overlap do we get from Johannesburg?+
South Africa is three and a half hours behind India, so our working days overlap for most of your morning and early afternoon.
How do you handle the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)?+
We design to POPIA's conditions for lawful processing: purpose limits, security safeguards and data-subject access, with data hosted in South African cloud regions when required. We sign NDAs before work starts.
Which currency do you bill in, and what does it cost?+
We bill in South African rand (ZAR) or US dollars. Senior engineers typically cost $25 to $49 (USD) per hour, and fixed-scope projects such as an MVP in 25 to 30 days are quoted after a free consultation.
Can you build in English and Afrikaans and isiZulu?+
Yes. We build interfaces and content in English and Afrikaans and isiZulu, and test them with native speakers before launch.
Where will our data be hosted?+
Usually in AWS Africa (Cape Town), Google Cloud africa-south1 (Johannesburg) and Azure South Africa North, or wherever your data rules require. Everything runs in your own cloud account, so you stay in control.
Do you work with mining companies?+
Yes. Mining is one of Johannesburg's key sectors, and our developers have built products for this sector and join your team quickly.
What experience do your LLM developers have?+
They have built RAG search, assistants, agents and AI features for real products, including Vumi, our own AI companion with voice, memory and 27 languages.
Can they work with our data securely?+
Yes. They follow data-minimisation, masking and access-control practices, and can deploy open-source models on your cloud when data must stay in-house.
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