Job Title: Senior Python Backend Software Engineer
Location: Charlotte, NC (On-Site)
Contract Role
Job Summary
We are seeking an experienced Senior Python Backend Software Engineer to design, develop, and maintain scalable, reliable, and high-performance backend services. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in Python, FastAPI, REST APIs, microservices, distributed systems, and workflow orchestration.
The candidate should have hands-on experience building resilient backend architectures, implementing asynchronous processing, optimizing performance, and integrating enterprise systems. Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP), tool-based orchestration, and LLM tool-calling patterns is highly desirable for supporting future AI-driven integrations.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services using Python and FastAPI.
- Build and integrate enterprise REST/JSON APIs and microservices.
- Implement tool-based orchestration patterns, including MCP-based architectures where applicable.
- Design workflow engines, state machines, and multi-step orchestration for complex business processes.
- Develop asynchronous and concurrent processing solutions for distributed systems.
- Implement robust error handling, retry mechanisms, idempotency, and recovery strategies.
- Use Redis or similar technologies for caching, request deduplication, rate limiting, and state management.
- Optimize backend performance, scalability, reliability, and resource utilization.
- Write comprehensive unit and integration tests using Pytest or similar frameworks.
- Monitor, troubleshoot, and debug distributed applications using logging and monitoring tools.
- Follow engineering best practices, including Git workflows, code reviews, CI/CD, linting, and static analysis.
- Implement secure API authentication and authorization using OAuth2, JWT, and related security practices.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver reliable enterprise-grade software solutions.
- Support future AI integrations involving LLM tool-calling capabilities.
Required Skills and Qualifications
- 5+ years of backend software development experience using Python.
- Strong hands-on experience with FastAPI and backend service development.
- Experience with MCP or other tool-based orchestration architectures.
- Strong knowledge of REST APIs, JSON integrations, API orchestration, and microservices.
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, asynchronous programming, and concurrency.
- Experience designing workflow engines, state machines, and multi-step business process orchestration.
- Strong understanding of resiliency patterns, including retries, failure handling, idempotency, and partial-success scenarios.
- Hands-on experience with Redis or similar caching technologies.
- Proficiency in unit testing and integration testing, preferably using Pytest.
- Experience debugging distributed systems and implementing logging and monitoring solutions.
- Familiarity with Git-based development, code reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and code quality tools.
- Working knowledge of secure API design, OAuth2, JWT, authentication, and authorization.
- Basic understanding of LLM integration and tool-calling patterns.
- Experience with AWS cloud services.
Good to Have
- Experience in insurance or financial services.
- Familiarity with enterprise business workflows and complex process orchestration.
- Experience integrating AI-powered services or LLM-based applications into backend systems.