Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable backend systems in ** Python **. This role is for someone who thrives in an environment where most of the day is spent ** writing code **, designing clean architectures, and solving hard problems independently.

You’ll develop backend services that handle complex **asynchronous workflows, state machines, and event-driven lifecycles **, powering distributed, data-intensive applications. The systems you build will integrate ** geospatial and temporal data **, enforce ** fine-grained permissions **, and operate across multiple services with high reliability.

You’ll work in a **modern Python environment **, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Redis, and Docker, collaborating with a small, high-performing engineering team that values autonomy, clean code, and pragmatic solutions.

This is a **90% hands-on coding position **, ideal for someone who loves to architect, implement, and own their code from design to deployment.

Responsibilities

• Design and build FastAPI-based services and APIs with a focus on performance, clarity, and maintainability.
• Implement state machines and ** event-driven workflows** that coordinate asynchronous operations across multiple services.

Work with PostgreSQL to design and query complex relational, geospatial, and temporal data models.

Build pub/sub and task processing patterns using ** Redis** and modern async frameworks.

• Integrate and extend **authentication and authorization systems **, enabling role-based and attribute-based access to data and endpoints.
• Deploy and maintain containerized applications using **Docker **, ensuring reliability, observability, and security.
• Write unit, integration, and performance tests that validate reliability and correctness.
• Participate in **code reviews and architecture discussions **, contributing to design patterns, tooling, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other engineers and analysts to define APIs, data contracts, and workflow orchestration patterns.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional backend software engineering experience, with a ** strong focus on Python **.
• Proven ability to design and deliver production-grade APIs and services using frameworks such as ** FastAPI** or Flask.
• Solid experience with **PostgreSQL **, including schema design, query optimization, and migrations.
• Practical knowledge of **geospatial and time-series querying **, data modeling, and efficient indexing.
• Experience building asynchronous systems using Redis (pub/sub, streams, or queues) or similar technologies.
• Strong foundation in Docker-based development and deployment workflows.
• Deep understanding of **software engineering best practices **, version control, testing, CI/CD, documentation, and type safety.
• Demonstrated ability to take full ownership of a complex backend service from concept to production, with minimal oversight.

Nice to Have

• Experience with event-driven architectures (Celery, FastStream, Kafka, or similar).
• Familiarity with authentication and authorization standards (OIDC, OAuth2, RBAC).
• Experience working with geospatial frameworks such as Shapely, GeoAlchemy2, or H3.
• Understanding of observability and monitoring (e.g., Sentry, structured logging, tracing).
• Experience deploying to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Prior work with async I/O in Python (asyncio, aiohttp, or similar).
• Knowledge of workflow orchestration and ** message-based inter-service communication **.