Francois Schoeman
Based in Stilbaai , South Africa
Full-stack developer with 5+ years of experience building SaaS platforms, AI-assisted automation, and SEO tooling for digital agencies. Strongest in Next.js, Python/Django, and self-hosted Linux infrastructure. Architected and built Straider.ai and most Prebo Digital internal tooling end-to-end; mentoring a junior developer; cross-functional with marketing and data teams on integrations. Promoted three times in two years.
Jan 2024 – Present · Promoted 3× in 2 years
Prebo Digital
Developer & Data Specialist
- Architected and built Straider.ai end-to-end — an AI-powered SEO automation platform aligned with Google’s E-E-A-T signals; Next.js, MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, OpenAI API. 9 large-scale clients onboarded.
- Partner with the product manager on scoping, roadmap, and concept validation across SaaS and internal tooling.
- Mentoring a junior developer through pairing, code review, and a structured ramp-up.
- Cross-functional with marketing, data, and CRO teams on Google Ads, Facebook Marketing, and marketplace API integrations.
- Collaboratively built ShopRank.ai — rewrites product content via OpenAI and syncs to Google Merchant Center and Bing Merchant Center; Next.js, Nest.js, PostgreSQL. 5,000+ SKUs processed per day.
- Shipped a Shopify SEO Fixer that auto-detects and resolves product/collection SEO issues; Python + Shopify Admin API.
- Built Google Merchant Center data validation with automated Slack alerts; cut manual triage by 3 hours/week.
- Migrated company sites from VPS to a Dedicated Xneelo Server; over 80% saved on monthly hosting cost.
- Implemented CRO experiments in VWO via vanilla JavaScript.
Mar 2021 – Dec 2023
GRKK Web Presence
Web Developer
- Replaced licensed digital-ad-board software with an open-source stack on DigitalOcean + Docker, cutting hosting costs by ~90%.
- Built a Django-based batch image resizer used internally for client onboarding.
- Wrote Python web scrapers automating product-data extraction.
- Maintained WordPress, Next.js, and static-site client builds on Xneelo and DigitalOcean: SEO, DNS, email hosting, cPanel, and PHP/MySQL support.
Skills
Featured Projects
An AI-powered SEO automation platform designed around scalable content generation and Google E-E-A-T principles, with support for large-scale client onboarding.
The easiest way to grow your newsletter. Find emails to cross-promote with, find newsletter sponsors and create collections of your favourite newsletters in one place.
A product-feed optimisation platform that uses AI to enhance product content and syncs data with Google Merchant Center, Amazon, and other commerce platforms.
A web application that provides various internal tools and utilities for Prebo Digital, a digital marketing agency. It includes free tools for the public.
Blog Posts
What a 1997 NASA Mars mission and operating system schedulers can teach us about managing our time when everything feels urgent and nothing seems to get done.
If you’ve ever needed to juggle two GitHub accounts - say, a personal one and a work one - on the same machine, you’ll know it’s not always plug-and-play.
Everyone’s journey into tech is different. Here’s how I discovered programming, fell in love with it, and turned it into a career I’m truly proud of.