Senior Backend Engineer

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 About You 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. Method of Application Interested applicants can apply through the link: https://forms.gle/kvgpa7RgLz6sh36A6