Senior Software Engineer

Why this role exists

Our edge is spotting the biggest business lever, choosing the leanest technical path, and shipping without drama. Senior Engineers translate product goals into smart trade-offs, keep momentum high, and make the whole team faster—not just write more code.

What you’ll do

• Shape the plan. Break ambiguous product ideas into sprint-sized work that balances effort, impact, and risk.
• Review for leverage, not lint. Run architecture and code reviews that surface material issues and unblock teammates the same day—no nit-picking that slows delivery without adding value.
• Jump to the critical path. Whether it’s UI, API, data, or infrastructure scripts, pitch in wherever progress stalls.
• Steer incident response. Coordinate fixes, keep customers informed, and capture learnings in concise post-mortems.
• Pair and communicate. Debug side-by-side, share context freely, and write crisp updates so everyone moves in the same direction.
• Challenge defaults. Question “how we’ve always done it,” ignore sunk costs, and choose solutions that best serve today’s goals—even if that means rewriting or deleting code.
• Build and ship. Design, develop, and deploy scalable microservices and front-end features using Python (FastAPI/Flask), React, AWS, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, and search technologies like ElasticSearch.
• Champion infrastructure as code. Use CDK, CloudFormation, or Pulumi to keep environments reproducible and secure.
• Mentor and multiply. Share knowledge, guide engineers toward better decisions, and raise the technical bar across the team.

How we’ll measure success

• Projects you lead hit agreed release dates despite shifting requirements.
• Trade-off thinking is evident in design docs, review comments, and sprint planning.
• Change-failure rate on services you touch stays under 5 percent, with rapid recovery when issues surface.
• Teammates say you clarify priorities, remove blockers, and make their work easier—especially through focused, high-value reviews.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional experience building and operating production web applications with Python; FastAPI or Flask preferred.
• Solid experience designing and implementing microservice architectures and event-driven systems.
• Strong working knowledge of AWS (e.g., ECS/EKS, Lambda, SQS/SNS, DynamoDB, RDS, CloudWatch).
• Proficient in SQL and NoSQL database design, optimization, and maintenance. Familiarity with ElasticSearch is a plus but not required at an expert level.
• Comfortable with modern front-end development using React.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as CloudFormation, CDK, or Pulumi.
• Demonstrated success operating in fast-moving startup environments characterized by ambiguity and frequent pivots.
• Interest in AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Devin AI) and a habit of integrating them into daily workflow.
• Excellent communication skills and a track record of mentoring peers.

Desired attributes

• Prior startup experience or proven comfort with rapid change.
• Ability to balance delivery speed with engineering rigor and maintainability.
• Highly autonomous, with a proactive, customer-centric mindset.