Senior II Backend Engineer
About the role
Ethyca is redefining trust in the age of AI. We build automated data privacy infrastructure that embeds governance directly into data, ensuring policy, consent, and control live wherever data moves. Our clients include The New York Times and the world's most advanced organizations scaling AI responsibly. We're on a mission to make trust, respect, and privacy a default feature of every tech stack.
Core Responsibilities
Lead the design and implementation of major system components, from DSR orchestration to API integrations to high-performance data processing pipelines.
Make critical decisions about system design, data models, and technology choices that will scale to support Fortune 500 customers processing billions of privacy requests.
Identify architectural risks and scaling bottlenecks before they become issues; propose solutions that keep us ahead of customer needs.
Champion best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and documentation; raise the bar for the entire team.
Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code that serves millions of users and meets enterprise-grade reliability standards.
Take projects from concept through design, implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration; driving outcomes, not just completing tasks.
Balance speed and excellence; ship rapidly while maintaining high standards for code quality, testing, and documentation.
Leverage AI-assisted tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and enhance productivity across the development lifecycle.
Collaboration & Mentorship
Provide technical guidance, code reviews, and architectural mentorship to help other engineers level up their skills.
Lead project planning sessions, write detailed technical specifications, and ensure alignment across engineering, product, and design.
Support the open source community through thoughtful PR reviews, issue triage, and helping users troubleshoot complex problems.
Work closely with Product, Design, and Customer Success to ensure technical solutions align with business goals and customer needs.
Operational Excellence
Design systems that handle enterprise workloads with demanding SLAs, security requirements, and compliance needs.
Use metrics, monitoring, and data analysis to inform architectural choices and operational improvements.
Take ownership of production systems; respond to incidents quickly and drive post-mortems that prevent future issues.
Identify inefficiencies in development workflows, tooling, and processes; propose and implement solutions.
Technical Expertise
Expert-level proficiency with Python 3 and web frameworks (Django, Flask, FastAPI); deep understanding of async programming, performance optimization, and Python ecosystem best practices.
Strong experience designing RESTful APIs, third-party integrations, and building systems that other developers love to use.
Proficient with relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and/or NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Redis); experience with data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery) is a plus.
Experienced with automated testing (unit, integration, E2E); experienced with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) and maintaining high test coverage.
Comfortable with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker), and infrastructure-as-code.
Understanding of enterprise security practices, data encryption, and compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2).
Experience designing systems that serve multiple large enterprise customers with data isolation and tenant-specific configurations.
Technical Leadership
Proven ability to design systems for scale, maintainability, and evolution; make sound technical tradeoffs between complexity, time, and quality.
Tackle ambiguous, complex problems with innovative solutions; comfortable diving deep into unfamiliar codebases or technologies.
Track record of helping other engineers grow through code reviews, pairing, documentation, and technical guidance.
Drive initiatives from concept to completion without waiting to be told what to do; comfortable with autonomy and accountability.
AI Integration Experience
Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.) to accelerate development and improve code quality.
Built AI-powered features or worked with ML models in production environments.
Experience integrating large language models into applications or infrastructure.
Privacy/Security Domain Expertise
Experience building consent management, data mapping, or privacy rights fulfillment systems.
Familiarity with GDPR, CCPA, or other privacy regulations and their technical implementation requirements.
Deep understanding of application security, data encryption, and secure coding practices.
Startup/High-Growth Experience
Thrived at Series A-C startups where you wore multiple hats and moved fast with limited resources.
Shipped products or major features from scratch that moved key business metrics.
Found creative solutions with constraints; comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities.
Additional Technical Depth
Comfortable working across the stack; can contribute to React/TypeScript codebases when needed.
Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, monitoring/observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).
Expert at query optimization, indexing strategies, and database performance tuning.
Open Source & Community Experience
Experience contributing to or maintaining open source projects; understand community dynamics and collaboration workflows.
Enjoy helping others troubleshoot issues, reviewing PRs, and engaging with developer communities.