Backend Software Engineer (API-focused)

Responsibilities

• Design and build production-grade FastAPI services — define clean, versioned RESTful API contracts, request/response schemas (Pydantic), and service boundaries within our microservice architecture.
• Own data modeling and query design — design normalized, performant PostgreSQL schemas, write and optimize SQL queries, and manage migrations (e.g., Alembic) as services evolve.
• Build reliable asynchronous workflows — design and maintain Celery tasks and queues for background processing, retries, and scheduled jobs.
• Ship and operate services on our Azure/Kubernetes platform — containerize services, deploy to AKS, and troubleshoot issues in a live production environment.
• Build in authentication, authorization, and security from the start — implement OAuth2/JWT-based auth, role-based access control, and follow API security best practices (OWASP API Top 10, input validation, secrets management).
• Write meaningful, layered test coverage — unit, integration, and functional/end-to-end tests (pytest) that give the team confidence to ship quickly.
• Participate in code reviews and design discussions — give and receive thoughtful feedback and help shape API and data model decisions across the team.
• Instrument services for observability — add logging, metrics, and tracing so issues can be diagnosed quickly in production.
• Collaborate cross-functionally — partner with frontend, mobile, and DevOps engineers to define API contracts and keep services aligned with product needs.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines — help maintain automated build, test, and deployment workflows for the services you own.

Requirements

• 3+ years of professional backend software development experience, including production use of Python.
• Strong hands-on experience with FastAPI building production APIs.
• Solid understanding of relational database design, normalization, and SQL query optimization (PostgreSQL preferred).
• Experience with Celery or a comparable distributed task queue (e.g., RQ, Kafka consumers) for asynchronous processing.
• Experience deploying and operating services in Kubernetes, ideally on Azure (AKS).
• Practical experience writing unit, integration, and functional tests (pytest or similar) as part of the regular development workflow.
• Working knowledge of authentication and authorization standards (OAuth2, JWT, API keys, RBAC).
• Understanding of API security best practices (OWASP API Top 10, input sanitization, secrets management, rate limiting).
• Comfort with Git-based collaborative workflows (pull requests, code review, branching strategies).
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipelines.

Qualifications

• Clear communication and a collaborative, ownership-driven approach to working with engineers.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Experience with Azure-specific services (Azure Key Vault, Azure Container Registry, Azure Monitor / App Insights).
• Familiarity with API documentation tooling (OpenAPI/Swagger).
• Experience with message brokers supporting Celery (Redis, RabbitMQ).
• Experience with database migration tooling (e.g., Alembic).
• Exposure to observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and distributed tracing.
• Exposure to Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm).
• Understanding of domain-driven design or broader microservice architecture patterns.
• Experience scaling APIs for a growing SaaS platform.