The role
This is a Python-first role. As Staff Engineer, you design and build production backend services in Python, backed by relational data and deployed on AWS. You take requirements from spec to production independently. You set a high bar for Python code quality, data correctness and performance.
Responsibilities
• Clarify requirements with product managers and engineers, then write the technical design for your features.
• Design, build and maintain backend services, APIs and data pipelines in Python.
• Set and uphold Python engineering standards: project structure, typing, code review, testing and performance.
• Design relational schemas and write efficient, well-tested SQL (queries, migrations and tuning).
• Deploy and run your services on AWS.
• Build event-driven integrations between services where the system needs them.
• Use AI-assisted development where it fits, and back every change with automated unit and integration tests.
• Give consistent, proactive updates on progress, blockers and risks.
Must-have qualifications
• Staff-level experience (typically 8+ years in software engineering), with most of it in Python.
• Expert Python: idiomatic, typed code; async and concurrency; packaging and dependency management; profiling and performance tuning.
• Production experience with Python web or API frameworks (for example FastAPI, Django or Flask).
• Strong automated testing in Python (for example pytest), including unit and integration tests.
• Strong proficiency in SQL: data modeling, complex queries, indexing and query optimization on a relational database (for example PostgreSQL or MySQL).
• Working, hands-on experience deploying and running Python services on AWS.
• Good communication in English, written and spoken.
• High ownership and independence. Able to deliver features end to end with little oversight.
Nice to have
• Experience with event-driven systems.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka (producers, consumers, topics and partitions), or Amazon MSK.
• Working knowledge of Java.
