Staff Backend Software Engineer

What you'll do:

• Own backend architecture for cloud software supporting Neptune, Triton, and Voyager (services, APIs, persistence, async processing, storage and compute integrations).

• Design, build, and operate scalable Python backends (Django / DRF), Celery pipelines, and REST APIs with strong reliability, performance, and observability.

• Lead complex, data-heavy workflows: uploads, project/scan lifecycle, recipe automation, task orchestration, and algorithm integration.

• Architect AWS usage for backends: S3, RDS/Aurora/Postgres, IAM, networking; design SageMaker and related ML job flows (invocation, data paths, security, failure modes, cost) with ML and platform partners.

• Coach and mentor engineering team members across the organization in architecture best practices and principles.

• Collaborate closely with product managers and engineering leadership to align technical objectives with business deliverables.

• Get your hands dirty and build – expect to be hands-on and building regularly

About you:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or a related field

• 10+ years of experience developing software, mostly backend

• Expert Python; 5+ years shipping production backends (Django / DRF a strong fit).

• Deep PostgreSQL and AWS data/storage (S3, RDS/Aurora); solid IAM and VPC-aware patterns

• 5+ years production AWS; practical SageMaker (or similar) for services you orchestrate, not only notebooks.

• Async systems: Celery + Redis or equivalent—queues, retries, idempotency, backpressure, prod debugging

• 2+ years of startup experience

• Owned architecture for complex, cloud-hosted, data-heavy products.

• Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor engineering peers on architectural principles.

• Experience designing for and complying with SOC2, ISO27001, ITAR, and other security compliance frameworks and standards

Bonus points for:

• Extensive experience with high-traffic, data-intensive web applications.

• Django + Celery at meaningful scale.

• Deep expertise in Kubernetes and AWS architecture, security, and optimization.

• High-throughput or large-payload APIs and pipelines.

• Regulated or export-controlled environments