We are looking for an experienced Full-Stack Developer to join us on a freelance or part-time basis. The role focuses primarily on Python backend development, REST APIs, systems integration, data processing, and application maintenance, while also requiring the ability to work with modern frontend applications.
The successful candidate will take ownership of existing software platforms, help evolve their architecture, and support reliable operation across development, staging, and production environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop, maintain, and improve web applications and digital services.
- Design and develop backend services and REST APIs.
- Build integrations with external platforms, data sources, and third-party services.
- Maintain and extend existing frontend applications.
- Develop data-processing, validation, and ingestion workflows.
- Work with structured data, metadata schemas, and external identifiers.
- Support integration between platforms while reducing unnecessary duplication of data and functionality.
- Maintain and improve existing application architecture, supporting gradual modernisation where appropriate.
- Deploy and operate containerised applications across development, staging, and production environments.
- Support application monitoring, logging, backup, and recovery processes.
- Implement secure authentication, authorisation, and data-handling practices.
- Investigate and resolve application, integration, database, and deployment issues.
- Contribute to technical documentation, architecture decisions, and development standards.
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders, external developers, service providers, and technical partners.
- Support technical planning and estimation for new features and project commitments.
- Help ensure that newly developed software remains maintainable, documented, and supportable over the long term.
Essential Requirements
- Approximately 5+ years of relevant professional software-development experience, or equivalent practical experience.
- Strong professional experience with Python and backend application development.
- Experience designing and implementing REST APIs and integrations with third-party services.
- Experience with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL.
- Good knowledge of modern frontend development, preferably React and TypeScript.
- Experience working with Docker and containerised applications.
- Comfortable working in Linux-based server environments.
- Strong working knowledge of Git, GitHub, and collaborative development workflows.
- Experience working with structured data such as JSON, data models, and schemas.
- Understanding of authentication and authorisation concepts such as OAuth 2.0.
- Ability to troubleshoot issues across frontend, backend, database, integration, and infrastructure layers.
- Experience maintaining and taking ownership of existing production software, not only developing greenfield applications.
- Professional working proficiency in English.
Desirable Experience
- Experience with some of the following would be valuable, but is not required:
- FastAPI or Django.
- Elasticsearch or other search technologies.
- CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment.
- NGINX, Traefik, or similar reverse-proxy technologies.
- Cloudflare or comparable infrastructure services.
- Background jobs, asynchronous processing, and data-ingestion pipelines.
- API-based data harvesting, transformation, and validation.
- Metadata standards, linked data, or JSON-LD.
- Persistent identifier systems.
- Data interoperability or research-data environments.
- AI/LLM API integrations.
- Integration with CMS, learning-management, or other third-party platforms.
- Experience in scientific, research, public-sector, or other data-intensive environments.
What We Are Looking For
- Can take ownership of a software platform and understand both its technical details and wider purpose.
- Is comfortable moving between software development, systems integration, and operational troubleshooting.
- Can work effectively with systems developed by different organisations and technical teams.
- Makes pragmatic architectural decisions and avoids unnecessary complexity.
- Is comfortable working with existing codebases and improving them incrementally.
- Communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Can work independently while collaborating effectively with external partners.
- Values maintainability, documentation, security, and operational reliability alongside delivery of new functionality.
- Is comfortable working in an international, distributed, and project-oriented environment.
Experience Level
- We would generally expect 5+ years of relevant professional software-development experience, although strong candidates with equivalent experience are encouraged to apply.
- Experience taking technical responsibility for production applications, integrations, or digital platforms will be considered particularly valuable.
Technology Environment
- Python, FastAPI, Django, React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Docker, REST APIs, Elasticsearch, Linux, GitHub, and NGINX/Traefik.
- The technology landscape may evolve over time, so the ability to understand and work across different systems is more important than prior experience with every individual technology listed.
Engagement
- This is a freelance / part-time position for an experienced developer who can work independently, take technical ownership, and collaborate effectively with internal and external partners.
If this opportunity is relevant to you, please reach out directly at info@devnation.be with a short introduction, your availability, and relevant experience.
Devnation