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