Taivara is a development house in Columbus, Ohio. It has 50+ years of experience across business consultation and end-to-end software development. It was founded in 2011. It works with Fortune 100 and mid-cap companies across the United States. Over half of the software engineers hold the Claude Certified AI Architect Professional qualification. Taivara is an Anthropic partner. Claude Code and agentic software are what the team learnt and uses every day.

The post is an AI Architect contract, open-ended. For the first 3 months I held it alongside Accelera Digital Group, from July to October 2024. Since then Taivara has been my sole contract. The agreement carries no exclusivity clause.

2 friends I went to highschool and university with were already at Taivara, so I had a strong referral. The deciding factor over Accelera Digital Group was the nomadic lifestyle it allowed.

In 2025 I billed over 1,000 hours. Taivara paid for my Claude Certified AI Architect Professional exam, and I hold the certification.

I bought an apartment at Cheverny for R700 000.

The stack, the remote arrangement and the contract terms are what keep me. I am still an AI Architect by title. I now also work as a sales representative for the firm. I find work for myself and partnerships for Taivara, in Taiwan and South Africa. Work has died down. Engineers at the firm are looking for new work, myself included.

Accelera Digital Group is Google Cloud’s largest partner in Africa. It works across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Its areas are data analytics, AI and machine learning, security and cloud modernisation. It has since been named Google Cloud Partner of the Year for Africa twice, in 2025 and 2026. The team did cloud migrations and held the Google partner relationship. That meant full access to Google’s tooling, their people and their offices.

The vacancy was for a senior software engineer to lead clients through migrations onto GCP. I was given the Betika contract. It overlapped with the opening months at Taivara: I held both from July to October 2024.

Accelera offered senior-level work for good pay. The role carried a Google partner status.

Betika was migrated to GCP.

I wanted to pursue a full career in the Taivara position, where I had found the work-life balance I wanted. I was burnt out running both posts. The Accelera work had little in it for me. I was migrating a betting house into GCP so people could bet on a high-frequency FIFA gaming platform. I went full time at Taivara.

SovTech is a South African development house. It builds enterprise software for international clients. It was founded in 2012 and rebranded as Scrums.com in 2024. Its client list includes Standard Bank, Vodacom, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Transport for London. More than 400 companies have used it. It works from offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, London, New York and Nairobi.

The vacancy was a software engineer seat banded 5 of 8, placed on a client project rather than on anything SovTech owned. I contracted into it independently. I was put on their utility product GK4.

It paid better than Celbux. I was working as an independent contractor. It was a larger and more corporate outfit, with high value clients. They had highly skilled development teams and daily lunches. It let me keep paying my home loan.

My quarterly report recorded that I performed on par with what was expected of me.

I left because the work held no interest for me. Developing and maintaining that software was too demanding for the reward it carried. Nothing in the project drew me in. Not the German, not the utility-measurement problem underneath it, and not the tech stack. The development lifecycle was too strict, and I averaged 180 hours a month over my last 2 months there. I took the openings at Taivara and Accelera Digital Group instead.

Celbux builds mobile vouchering banking solutions. For 10 years the company specialised in South African government disbursements, paying out to NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) students. NSFAS is South Africa’s national student funding body, and its NSFAS Wallet runs on Celbux. Students draw their allowances at partner merchants nationwide. Celbux is a Google partner and the product is built on GCP. The product rests on smart money. Spend is locked into a voucher number, and that voucher is redeemable across the country.

The vacancy was for a senior software engineer to help lead the development branch of the company. It was permanent, and taking it meant relocating inland to Centurion. I was made responsible for a number of large-scale projects in the R&D department. I owned each of them end to end: blueprint, design, implementation, test, deploy and support. Dev teams ran under me on that work.

I had been out of work for 8 months. I was interviewing at a number of companies through OfferZen. Celbux was fintech and used Golang and GCP heavily. They wanted their Java monolith rewritten into Golang microservices.

Celbux is where I learned Golang, GCP and how to build cloud systems at scale. My brother and I bought an apartment in the same city for R2 000 000.

The company ran out of funds and faced liquidation. A business of 32 employees shrank to 3. Many were retrenched. My brother became CTO. There was no money left for promotions. My title and my salary never moved since I joined. I had a home loan to maintain and 3 cats to keep, and I needed a new income. Celbux continues to survive on a streamlined team.

Blockbytes is a game studio and an official Minecraft Marketplace partner, working with Mojang Studios and Microsoft. It builds content for the Minecraft Marketplace. Its add-ons and maps reach players worldwide. It was founded in 2020 and runs on 40+ contractors. My brother already owned the company when I started working there.

The post was project managing the studio’s logo through to delivery. I wrote the specification and briefed the studio’s illustrators and animators. They did the drawing and the animation. It was unpaid.

It was a passion project and an investment in my brother’s business, not a job. I did it for free because I wanted him to succeed.

The logo was created and animated to the standard the game studio demanded. It is live on their website, and the animated version is attached.

The logo was delivered.

Masks For Africa was a venture I started with my brother James at the beginning of COVID, to sell personal protective equipment into the South African market. It was never formally constituted. There was no registration, no premises and no staff. It was a supply line from Chinese factories to South African buyers, and the software the two of us wrote to run it.

There was no vacancy behind this and no employer. I was a co-founder, self-employed and unpaid throughout. I ran the South African end with my brother James, while our business partner in China handled the factory side. The role was whatever the two of us could not pay somebody else to do: I built and ran the software, and I did the selling.

I took it because I needed money. The teaching job in China had fallen through. I had lost around R30 000 on plane tickets that were never flown. I set out to use the contacts I already had. Those contacts came out of the TEFL course in China, where the factories were. I thought I would make a lot of money during the crisis.

We made no sales and took no profit. There was no salary and no drawings. By the end I was out of pocket on the hosting for our own tools, on top of the cost of the months spent unemployed. Multi-million-rand jobs came close and did not land. The tenders went the same way. Time was lost to scams, and contracts were lost for want of credentials we did not have.

The problem was capital. Our clients wanted the stock in South Africa. Every serious lead wanted to view it before committing. The factory pipeline we had in China required 50% upfront. The minimum order quantities on offer were beyond the capital we had. We did not have the import and export expertise to close that gap. I gave up on it and pivoted back into the tech industry. The architecture we had built is what I put in front of people. It landed me at Celbux.

Zhongshan Jizhong Sanxin Bilingual School was founded in 2001. It is in Sanxiang Town in Zhongshan, Guangdong province. The campus sits close to the Zhuhai border and the Macau crossing. It is a private, fully boarding bilingual school. It teaches from kindergarten to an international high school stream, on a campus of several thousand students. It hires foreign teachers directly to teach the English side.

The post was a direct hire teaching English to elementary classes, contracted to the school and meant to be worked on site in Zhongshan. It required a TEFL qualification before the school would sponsor it, and the training was taken in person in Cape Town in two parts:

• 120-hour TEFL/TESOL programme, The International TEFL Organization. Grammar structure and how to teach it, materials creation, evaluation and testing, and the integrated skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• 20 Hour Practical TEFL Teaching Course, TEFL SA. Teaching practice with feedback, discipline and classroom management, elicitation, concept checking, error correction, drama and role play, pronunciation, and teaching young learners.

The school sponsored the work permit. The Chinese Z visa was issued as single entry, valid for 6 months.

Mandarin is a passion of mine. I first took it at the University of Cape Town in 2014 and wanted to major in it, and I have kept studying it since. Living in China was the fastest way to move it forward, and teaching English was the way in.

I never taught on site and I never took up the residence permit. I left with a few weeks of remote lessons. I kept the 2 TEFL qualifications.

The school cut my pay because I was still in South Africa and not in Zhongshan. At the reduced rate the position no longer covered me. My funds ran out and I forfeited the post. I started Masks For Africa with my brother James.

Luno is a retail cryptocurrency exchange and wallet. It was founded in Cape Town in 2013 as BitX and took the Luno name in 2017. It is one of the largest crypto exchanges in Africa. It has millions of customers across more than 40 countries. Digital Currency Group acquired it in 2020.

The vacancy was for a backend engineer on the rewards and wallet team. It was permanent, on the second of the company’s five engineering levels. The team held the wallet and the rewards product as one shared surface rather than splitting it by component.

Pay, balance and a company I actively wanted to work at. Luno had a reputation for better pay and for a better life alongside the job. The other half of it was the stack. I had built everything I knew on old tech. Moving to Golang on AWS was the expansion I needed.

I was paid a 13th cheque for the work I did there. There was no promotion: I joined at level 2 and left at level 2.

Mandarin is a passion of mine and has been since I first took it at UCT. I wanted to live inside the language rather than study it from a distance, so I resigned to teach English in China. Then spent the rest of the year acquiring a TEFL qualification, work permit and visa.

ACI Worldwide builds white-label banking software. It is listed on NASDAQ. More than 1,000 of the largest financial institutions and intermediaries worldwide run its software. Its flagship product is Postilion. Postilion is a payment switching, ATM driving and card management platform. Commercial banks, regional financial institutions and payment processors run it in South Africa and internationally. Most of the largest South African banks are on it.

The vacancy was for a junior backend engineer on the backend database team. It was permanent, and I went into it straight from finishing my degrees at UCT. The post paired development work on the data layer with a rotating level 3 support position. That rotation was the last line before the product team, so half the job was scheduled work and half was whatever the banks raised. ACI ran a four-level engineering ladder: junior, intermediate, senior and principal. I joined on the first level and left on the second.

Pay and domain. I had deliberately been unable to find good work in games development. Java, Python and SQL were the strongest things I carried out of the degree. This job wanted all three. It was also my first step into fintech. I remain in fintech today.

I was promoted to intermediate. I earned it by volunteering to take the level 3 support rotation over the Christmas holidays. My pay went from R310 000 a year to R360 000.

The promotion came with a raise that did not match what the industry was paying for the same work. I left for Luno.

Blablabla Studios makes gambling games that run on slot machines in casinos around the world. It designs the slot games and the art and animation behind them for the iGaming industry. Its operators are across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia.

Fuzzy Logic Studio makes games in Unity, using AR and VR. It builds immersive training and visualisation for enterprise clients. Its portfolio includes Aston Martin, Anglo American, Hyundai, Nissan, Renault and Network Rail.

Two internships in my final year at the University of Cape Town, taken alongside my coursework: Blablabla Studios in January and Fuzzy Logic Studio in July. Neither studio had a vacancy to fill and neither internship was paid. Both agreed to take me onto the team for the experience, so each post was a seat on a working team rather than a job that was being hired for.

I needed line items on my CV, commercial work before I had my degree. I wanted a job in the games development industry. Both firms were local, and both said yes.

At Fuzzy Logic I used a CI/CD pipeline for the first time. At Blablabla I integrated into an API for the first time.

Neither job was open-ended. I went back to finish my final year at the University of Cape Town.

Taivara 是一家位於美國俄亥俄州哥倫布市的軟體開發公司。 團隊在商業顧問與端到端軟體開發上累積了 50 年以上的經驗。 公司成立於 2011 年，客戶是美國的財星百大與中型企業。 超過一半的軟體工程師持有 Claude Certified AI Architect Professional 認證。 Taivara 是 Anthropic 的合作夥伴。 Claude Code 與代理式軟體是團隊學會、而且每天都在用的東西。

這是一份 AI 架構師的約聘職位，沒有設定結束日期。 最初 3 個月我同時扛著 Accelera Digital Group，時間是 2024 年 7 月到 10 月。在那之後，Taivara 是我唯一的合約。 合約裡沒有專屬條款。

兩位高中和大學時期的朋友已經在 Taivara，我因此拿到很強的引薦。 相對於 Accelera Digital Group，決定性的因素是它容許的游牧式生活。

2025 年我請款超過 1,000 小時。 Taivara 支付了我的 Claude Certified AI Architect Professional 考試費用，這張認證我也拿到了。

我以 700,000 南非幣在 Cheverny 買下一間公寓。

技術堆疊、遠端的安排，以及合約條件，是留住我的原因。 我的職稱仍然是 AI 架構師。 現在我同時也擔任公司的業務代表。 我為自己找案子，也為 Taivara 在台灣與南非找合作夥伴。 案量已經降下來，公司裡的工程師都在找新的工作，包括我自己。

Accelera Digital Group 是 Google Cloud 在非洲最大的合作夥伴。 業務橫跨非洲、歐洲與中東。 專長領域是資料分析、AI 與機器學習、資訊安全，以及雲端現代化。 公司此後兩度獲選非洲區 Google Cloud 年度最佳夥伴，分別是 2025 年與 2026 年。 團隊負責雲端遷移，並維繫與 Google 的夥伴關係。 這代表我們能完整用到 Google 的工具、他們的人，以及他們的辦公空間。

這個職缺是資深軟體工程師，帶著客戶完成遷移到 GCP 的過程。 我被指派到 Betika 這個合約。 它與我在 Taivara 的最初幾個月重疊：2024 年 7 月到 10 月，兩份工作我同時扛著。

Accelera 給的是資深層級的工作，待遇也不錯。 這個職位還帶著 Google 合作夥伴的身分。

Betika 已經完成遷移到 GCP。

我想把 Taivara 這個位置走成完整的職涯，我在那裡找到了想要的工作與生活平衡。 同時扛兩份工作讓我倦怠。 Accelera 的工作對我來說收穫有限：我做的是把一家博弈公司搬上 GCP，好讓人們在高頻的 FIFA 遊戲平台上下注。 我轉為全職投入 Taivara。

SovTech 是一家南非的軟體開發公司，為國際客戶打造企業級軟體。 公司成立於 2012 年，2024 年更名為 Scrums.com。 客戶名單包括 Standard Bank、Vodacom、Deloitte、Ernst & Young 與 Transport for London。 超過 400 家企業用過它的服務。 辦公室分布在約翰尼斯堡、開普敦、倫敦、紐約與奈洛比。

這個職缺是軟體工程師，職級為八級中的第五級，被派到客戶專案上，而不是 SovTech 自己的產品。 我以獨立承包商的身分簽約進去。 我被分到他們的公用事業產品 GK4。

它給的比 Celbux 多，而我當時是獨立承包商。 這是一家規模更大、更企業化的公司，客戶的價值也更高。 他們有技術很強的開發團隊，還天天供餐。 這份工作讓我能繼續繳房貸。

我的季度考核紀錄寫著，我的表現符合對我的期待。

我離開，是因為這份工作引不起我的興趣。 開發與維護那套軟體要付出的，遠超過它帶來的回報。 這個專案沒有一點吸引我：德文不是，底下那個公用事業計量的問題不是，技術堆疊也不是。 開發流程過於嚴格，最後兩個月我平均每月工時 180 小時。 我改去接下 Taivara 與 Accelera Digital Group 的機會。

Celbux 開發行動票券式的銀行解決方案。 公司十年來專注於南非政府的補助款發放，對象是 NSFAS（國家學生財務援助計畫）的學生。 NSFAS 是南非全國性的學生補助機構，它的 NSFAS Wallet 就跑在 Celbux 上。 學生可以在全國的合作商家領取並使用自己的補助金。 Celbux 是 Google 合作夥伴，產品建構在 GCP 上。 產品的核心是智慧金流：可支用的金額被鎖進一組票券號碼，這組票券在全國通用。

這個職缺是資深軟體工程師，要協助帶領公司的開發部門。 屬於正職，接下它意味著搬到內陸的 Centurion。 我被指派負責研發部門的數個大型專案。 每一個都由我從頭顧到尾：藍圖、設計、實作、測試、部署與後續支援。 這些專案底下有開發團隊由我帶。

我當時已經失業 8 個月，正透過 OfferZen 面試好幾家公司。 Celbux 屬於金融科技，而且大量使用 Golang 與 GCP。 他們想把 Java 的單體系統改寫成 Golang 微服務。

Celbux 是我學會 Golang、GCP，以及如何建構大規模雲端系統的地方。 我和兄弟在同一座城市以 2,000,000 南非幣買下一間公寓。

公司資金耗盡，面臨清算。 32 人的公司縮到 3 人，許多同事被資遣。 我的兄弟接任技術長。 公司沒有餘力升遷，從我到職起，我的職稱與薪資都沒有動過。 我有房貸要繳，還養著 3 隻貓，需要新的收入。 Celbux 以精簡後的團隊繼續存活著。

Blockbytes 是一家遊戲工作室，也是 Minecraft Marketplace 的官方合作夥伴，與 Mojang Studios 及 Microsoft 合作。 公司為 Minecraft Marketplace 製作內容。 它的擴充內容與地圖觸及全球玩家。 公司成立於 2020 年，由 40 位以上的外包夥伴支撐。 我開始參與時，公司已經是我兄弟的。

這個位置負責把工作室的商標從發想一路管到交付。 我寫規格，並向工作室的插畫師與動畫師說明需求。 實際的繪製與動畫由他們完成。 這份工作沒有報酬。

這是一個出於熱情的專案，也是對我兄弟事業的投資，而不是一份工作。 我免費做，因為我希望他成功。

商標依遊戲工作室要求的水準完成製作與動畫。 它目前用在他們的官方網站上，動態版本已附在下方。

商標交付完成。

Masks For Africa 是 COVID 剛開始時，我和兄弟 James 一起做起來的事業，把個人防護裝備賣進南非市場。 它從來沒有正式設立，沒有登記、沒有辦公室，也沒有員工。 它就是一條從中國工廠到南非買家的供應線，加上我們兩個人自己寫的軟體。

這背後沒有職缺，也沒有雇主。 我是共同創辦人，全程自僱，而且從頭到尾沒有領過薪水。 我和兄弟 James 顧南非這一端，中國的合作夥伴顧工廠那一端。 這個角色就是我們兩個人請不起別人做的所有事：我建了軟體也維運它，銷售也是我在跑。

我做它，是因為我需要錢。 中國的教職沒了，我在沒有飛成的機票上損失了大約 30,000 南非幣。 我打算用手上既有的人脈，而那些人脈來自我在中國的 TEFL 課程，工廠就在那裡。 我以為自己會在這場危機裡賺到一大筆錢。

我們沒有做成任何一筆生意，也沒有拿到利潤。 沒有薪水，也沒有分紅。到最後，自家工具的雲端費用是我自掏腰包，還要加上那幾個月沒有收入的代價。 幾筆數百萬南非幣的案子差一點成交，最後都沒有落地，標案也是一樣的結果。 有些時間耗在詐騙上，也有合約因為我們拿不出資格文件而丟掉。

問題出在資金。 客戶要的是已經在南非的現貨，每一個認真的買家都想先看到貨才願意下單。 我們在中國的工廠供應鏈要求 50% 訂金，而對方開出的最低訂購量超出我們手上的資金。 我們也沒有足以補上這段落差的進出口專業。 我放掉了它，回頭轉進科技產業。 我拿出去給人看的，正是我們當時建起來的那套架構，它讓我進了 Celbux。

中山市紀中三鑫雙語學校創立於 2001 年。 校址位於廣東省中山市三鄉鎮。 校區鄰近珠海交界，離澳門關口也很近。 這是一所私立、全住宿的雙語學校。 從幼兒園一路辦到國際高中部，校內學生數千人。 學校直接聘用外籍教師負責英語這一塊。

這是學校直接聘用的職位，教小學班級英文，合約與學校簽訂，原本應該在中山當地到校授課。 學校要求先取得 TEFL 資格才願意提供擔保，而這項訓練我在開普敦分兩階段實體完成：

• 120 小時 TEFL/TESOL 課程，The International TEFL Organization。內容包含文法結構與教法、教材製作、評量與測驗，以及聽、說、讀、寫的整合技能。
• 20 小時 TEFL 實務教學課程，TEFL SA。內容包含帶回饋的教學實作、班級經營與常規管理、引導提問、概念檢核、錯誤糾正、戲劇與角色扮演、發音，以及兒童教學。

學校為我申請工作許可，中國 Z 字簽證核發為單次入境，效期 6 個月。

華語是我的熱情所在。 2014 年我在開普敦大學第一次修課，當時就想把它列為主修，之後也一直沒有停下來。 住在中國是讓它進步最快的方式，而教英文就是進去的門路。

我始終沒有到校任教，也沒有真的用上居留許可。 最後留下的是幾週的遠距課程。 兩張 TEFL 資格證書我保留了下來。

學校因為我人還在南非、沒有到中山，把我的薪資調降了。 在調降後的待遇下，這個職位已經撐不起我的生活。 我的資金用盡，只好放棄這個職位。 接著我和兄弟 James 一起做了 Masks For Africa。

Luno 是一家面向散戶的加密貨幣交易所與錢包服務。 公司 2013 年在開普敦成立，當時名為 BitX，2017 年改名 Luno。 它是非洲規模最大的加密貨幣交易所之一。 在超過 40 個國家擁有數百萬名客戶。 2020 年由 Digital Currency Group 收購。

這個職缺是獎勵與錢包團隊的後端工程師，屬於正職，位階在公司五級工程職涯中的第二級。 團隊把錢包與獎勵產品當成同一個共用的產品面來顧，而不是按元件切開。

薪資、生活平衡，還有一家我真心想進去的公司。Luno 在薪資和工作之外的生活品質上都有名聲。 另一半原因是技術堆疊。我過去會的一切都建立在舊技術上，轉到 AWS 上的 Golang 正是我需要的拓展。

我因為在那裡的表現拿到第 13 個月的獎金。沒有升遷：進去是第 2 級，離開時也是第 2 級。

華語是我的熱情所在，從我在開普敦大學第一次修課開始就是如此。 我想住進這個語言裡，而不是隔著距離研究它，所以我辭職去中國教英文。 那一年剩下的時間，我都在取得 TEFL 資格、工作許可與簽證。

ACI Worldwide 開發白牌銀行軟體，並在 NASDAQ 上市。 全球有超過 1,000 家大型金融機構與中介機構使用它的軟體。 旗艦產品是 Postilion，一套支付交換、ATM 驅動與卡片管理平台。 商業銀行、區域型金融機構與支付處理商在南非與國際市場上都在用它。 南非多數大型銀行都跑在這套系統上。

這個職缺是後端資料庫團隊的初階後端工程師，屬於正職，我從開普敦大學唸完學位後直接進去。 職務一半是資料層的開發工作，一半是輪值的第三線支援。那個輪值是進到產品團隊之前的最後一道防線，所以工作有一半是排定好的任務，另一半是銀行隨時丟過來的問題。 ACI 的工程職涯分四級：初階、中級、資深與首席。 我從第一級進去，離開時是第二級。

薪資與產業領域。我當時一直沒能在遊戲開發領域找到理想的工作。 Java、Python 與 SQL 是我從學位裡帶走最扎實的三項能力，而這份工作三樣都要。 這也是我踏進金融科技的第一步，到今天我仍然在這個產業裡。

我升上了中級工程師。 這個升遷，是我自願在聖誕假期接下第三線支援輪值換來的。 年薪從 310,000 南非幣調到 360,000 南非幣。

升遷帶來的加薪，跟同樣的工作在市場上的行情有落差。 我離開，去了 Luno。

Blablabla Studios 開發在全球賭場拉霸機上運行的博弈遊戲。 公司為 iGaming 產業設計拉霸遊戲，以及背後的美術與動畫。 合作的營運商分布於歐洲、美洲、亞洲與澳洲。

Fuzzy Logic Studio 以 Unity 開發遊戲，運用 AR 與 VR。 公司為企業客戶打造沉浸式的教育訓練與視覺化應用。 作品實績包括 Aston Martin、Anglo American、Hyundai、Nissan、Renault 與 Network Rail。

兩份實習都在開普敦大學最後一年、與課業並行時完成：1 月在 Blablabla Studios，7 月在 Fuzzy Logic Studio。 兩家工作室當時都沒有職缺，兩份實習也都沒有薪水。 雙方都同意讓我進到團隊裡累積經驗，所以這兩個位置是正式團隊中的一個座位，而不是對外招募的職位。

我需要在履歷上寫下實績，在拿到學位之前先有商業專案的經驗。 我想進入遊戲開發產業。 這兩家公司都在當地，而且都答應了我。

在 Fuzzy Logic，我第一次用上 CI/CD 流程。 在 Blablabla，我第一次做 API 串接。

兩份工作都有既定的期限。 我回到開普敦大學，把最後一年的學業唸完。