Backend Engineer

We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Python Developer / Technical Lead with at least 7 years of experience to join our team. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will design and build backend systems yourself, lead small delivery teams, and take products from early proof of concept through to production. You will bring deep architectural understanding, strong expertise in our core stack (Python, FastAPI, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, AWS), and practical experience building AI-powered solutions with Claude.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Lead small, cross-functional delivery teams, owning end-to-end product delivery from concept and architecture through development, deployment, and production support.
• Rapidly design and build Proofs of Concept (POCs) and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to validate ideas, then evolve successful prototypes into scalable production systems.
• Define technical direction, break down work, set priorities, and keep delivery on track while staying hands-on in the codebase.
• Mentor and support developers, conduct code reviews, and promote engineering best practices across the team.

Architecture & Development

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, secure, and robust backend solutions using Python and related technologies.
• Make sound architectural decisions covering system design, data modeling, API design, scalability, and trade-offs between speed and long-term maintainability.
• Build high-performance RESTful APIs using FastAPI and integrate with internal and third-party services.
• Optimize application performance and database queries across MongoDB and PostgreSQL.
• Write clean, efficient, reusable, and well-tested code following industry best practices.

AI & Claude Development

• Design and build AI-powered features and applications using Claude via the Anthropic API, including prompt engineering, tool use / function calling, and agentic workflows.
• Integrate LLM capabilities into products in a reliable, cost-efficient, and secure way, including evaluation, monitoring, and handling of model limitations.
• Use AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code to accelerate delivery and raise team productivity.

Quality, Operations & Collaboration

• Implement comprehensive unit and integration tests to ensure code quality and maintainability.
• Work closely with DevOps to deploy, monitor, and scale applications on AWS.
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues quickly and thoroughly.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and stakeholders to define, design, and ship new features.
• Stay current with developments in Python, cloud, and AI technologies and propose improvements to systems and processes.

Requirements

Mandatory

• Minimum 7 years of professional Python development experience.
• Proven hands-on leadership experience: leading small delivery teams while actively contributing code.
• Demonstrated track record of creating POCs and MVPs and taking products end-to-end into production.
• Deep understanding of software architecture, including system design, distributed systems, API design, and data modeling.
• Hands-on experience developing with Claude (Anthropic API), including prompt engineering, tool use, and building LLM-powered or agentic applications.
• Strong proficiency in FastAPI, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, unit testing (e.g. pytest), and AWS.
• Solid understanding of object-oriented programming and design patterns.
• Experience with RESTful API development and integration.
• Experience with containerization technologies such as Docker.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Claude Code, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and Kubernetes.
• Experience with other LLM providers or AI frameworks.
• Background in startup or fast-paced product environments.

What We’re Looking For

• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, able to explain technical decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ownership and accountability for outcomes, not just tasks.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple priorities at once.