We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Platform & Infrastructure team. You will design, build, and operate high-throughput Python/Django services running on Kubernetes, and help us integrate vector search and AI-powered retrieval into our core product. This is a high-ownership role: you will influence architecture decisions, mentor peers, and ship features end-to-end.

Key Responsibilities

Backend Development

• Architect and build scalable REST and async APIs using Python and Django (DRF or Ninja).
• Design and maintain relational data models, optimize query performance, and manage migrations.
• Implement background task pipelines with Celery, Redis, or equivalent.
• Build event-driven and asynchronous networked services using the Twisted framework.
• Apply strong networking knowledge (TCP/IP, WebSockets, TLS, HTTP/2) to design reliable, low-latency service communication.
• Integrate vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Qdrant) for semantic search and AI retrieval workflows.

Infrastructure & Kubernetes

• Deploy and operate services on Kubernetes (EKS / GKE / AKS) using Helm and GitOps practices.
• Write and maintain Kubernetes manifests, manage HPA, resource quotas, and pod disruption budgets.
• Instrument services with OpenTelemetry; build dashboards and alerts in Grafana / Prometheus.
• Participate in on-call rotation and drive post-incident reviews.

Vector & AI Workloads

• Design embedding pipelines and vector index strategies for production-scale retrieval.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to serve and version model artifacts reliably.
• Evaluate and benchmark vector database options against latency, throughput, and cost targets.

Quality & Collaboration

• Write thorough unit, integration, and contract tests (pytest, factory_boy).
• Lead and participate in code reviews, raising the bar for engineering quality.
• Contribute to technical documentation, ADRs, and runbooks.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through pairing and structured feedback.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary benchmarked to senior IC market rates.
• On-site position based at our office with a collaborative, in-person engineering culture.
• Annual learning & development budget (conferences, courses, certifications).
• Equity participation and performance-based bonuses.
• Health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Modern hardware of your choice and a home-office setup allowance.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, disability, or any

Requirements

Must-Have

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in Python (3.10+) and Django; familiarity with async Python (asyncio, HTTPX) is a strong plus.
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience: deployments, services, ingress, RBAC, and debugging live clusters.
• Experience integrating or operating at least one vector database in a production environment.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems: caching, message queues, eventual consistency.
• Proficiency with Git-based workflows, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or similar).
• Experience with Twisted framework for event-driven, asynchronous networked applications.
• Strong networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, HTTP/2, WebSockets, TLS, DNS, and load balancing concepts.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with SDMX or statistical data standards.
• Contributions to open-source Python or Kubernetes tooling.
• Knowledge of data pipeline orchestration (Airflow, Prefect, Dagster).
• Exposure to LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) and RAG system design.
• Familiarity with national or government information systems.