Software developer for hire

👋 Hi, I'm Jason Wallace, a senior full-stack software developer based in Cape Town, South Africa (UTC+2). Let me answer a few questions you might have 👇

Why should I hire you full-time?

You can't, sorry 😅. I'm currently focusing on building my own software products to sell online.

Oh okay, so why does this page exist?

Because entrepreneurship is difficult and unpredictable, but that's where we can help each other out.

I spend about half my time building my own software products and the other half as a freelancer, building software for others. That way I get to balance the risk of entrepreneurship with the income from freelancing.

I see, so why should I hire you as a freelancer then?

Now we're talking!

Firstly, I love building software. Not just for myself, but for people across widely different domains, from hardware devices to telephony platforms. I can't help getting deeply invested in making the software I write (or that AI writes) both beautiful and useful.

Secondly, entrepreneurship has taught me that software is a means to an end (i.e., software itself isn't valuable) and it's only as valuable as the problems it solves. So if you need help solving problems, let's chat.

And thirdly, my wife and infant child would greatly appreciate it 😁.

Interesting! What kind of experience do you have?

These are some of the products I've built and run myself (the entrepreneurial half of my time I mentioned earlier):

• CarPriceValue (2024): a South African used-car tracker that flags over- and under-priced listings, valuing each car with a machine-learning model trained on the market. Built and run solo, grown to around 2,000 users.
• jinjabread (2024): my own Python static-site generator, and my most-starred open-source project at around 96 stars. This very site runs on it.
• GiftsWanted (2026): a store-agnostic gift registry for families planning big events. Built and shipped solo.

These are some of the freelance clients I've worked for:

• TinyPilot (2021–2026): an open-source KVM-over-IP hardware device.

  • Was the core engineer and most active contributor for 5 years, through the product's growth to roughly $1M ARR and its acquisition in 2024.
  • Built the commercial licence-activation system spanning device, server, and browser, with close to 6,000 licences activated.
  • Built the front-panel software that drives the device's LCD and buttons, plus a browser-based emulator to develop it without the hardware.
  • Maintained the WebRTC/H.264 video stack at around 140ms latency while cutting streaming bandwidth by up to 97%.

• World Agroforestry (ICRAF) (2019–2020): a web app that turned peer-reviewed agricultural studies into data that users could explore to make farming decisions.

• Particl (2017–2018): the frontend of a decentralized marketplace (they paid me in Bitcoin 🤑).

• Nutrition Hub (2014–2015): a web app that formulated dog food to a target nutritional value.

And these are some of the full-time jobs I've had:

• Sudonum (2017–2021): a SaaS for programmable telephony, call tracking, and WhatsApp lead tracking.

  • Joined as employee number 3 and became lead full-stack developer, as the platform grew to serve the majority of South Africa's property and vehicle classifieds.
  • Built the infrastructure-as-code behind the Django API and a fleet of FreeSWITCH voice switches (14 production environments across 8 countries), with automatic failover so a live call survives its switch dying mid-call.
  • Built and led the WhatsApp Business messaging product: message templates, media and group messaging, and multiple upstream providers.
  • Founded the wholesale voice-routing service and its anti-fraud controls, blocking number spoofing and disallowed international calls.

• Pilot Labs (2016–2017): an MVP software studio, where I was the sole engineer across 3 product codebases (including KiKiCall, a USSD survey-for-airtime app) before it wound down.

• M4JAM (2015–2016): a South African micro-jobbing platform. I joined straight out of university and became its highest-volume contributor as it grew to around 100,000 gig workers, building the PostGIS job-matching engine and the crowd-sourced mapping workflow for clients like TomTom. I also fell in love with Django here, migrating the platform off Parse and onto it.

Hmm, I'm seeing someone who likes building products end to end. So what's your preferred tech stack?

Yes, exactly! I mostly prefer building new products with "boring technology" (i.e., mature tech with little to no surprises).

These are some of the technologies I'm most comfortable with:

• Languages: Python, JavaScript, Go, Bash
• Web: Django, Flask, htmx, React, CSS, Tailwind
• Databases: PostgreSQL, PostGIS, SQLite
• Telephony: FreeSWITCH, SIP, VoIP, WebRTC
• Embedded: Linux USB gadget, Raspberry Pi
• Infrastructure: Debian, Docker, Kamal, Ansible, nginx
• Hosting: Hetzner, Fly.io, AWS, DigitalOcean
• Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry
• Tooling: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Claude Code

Still, I'm open to learning new technologies when the job calls for it.

How much AI do you use on a daily basis?

I'm using AI every day! About $100 worth (per month).

Most of my coding sessions start with a conversation with AI and end with a manual code review.

I rely on AI to generate code, but I don't necessarily trust it to generate the right code. I rely on my own expertise to guide the process.

Okay, so what's the best way to start working together?

Listen, we don't know each other that well, and honestly I might not be the right fit for your project, but the only way to truly know is if we work together.

I recommend we start with a tightly scoped project, about 10 hours of work (i.e., less than $1000), and go from there. That way you can get a feel for my working style without any long-term commitment.

But before all that, it all starts with a conversation about what you're trying to achieve. Email me what you have in mind and I'll tell you whether I can help or not: jason@newidea.io