Lead Backend Engineer - Python/FastAPI

Job Title : Technical Lead - Backend Systems

Role Summary :

We are hiring a Lead Backend Engineer with 10+ years of experience who will own backend architecture and system design while remaining deeply hands-on. This role is for someone already making architectural decisions.

You will design, build, and evolve distributed backend systems, define architectural standards, and guide teams through complex technical decisions.

Required Qualifications :

Must have :

• 10+ years of backend/software engineering experience
• 3+ years of production experience with FastAPI
• Expert-level Python knowledge

Strong experience with

• Relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL)
• At least one NoSQL datastore
• Deep understanding of :
• Backend architecture patterns
• Design patterns (GoF, SOLID, DDD concepts)
• Distributed systems fundamentals

Additional qualifications :

• Experience designing and evolving large-scale systems
• Practical experience with cloud services and deployments
• Proven ability to lead technical decisions and architecture discussions
• Experience migrating monoliths to microservices (or deciding not to)
• Event-driven or streaming systems experience
• API gateways, rate limiting, auth systems (OAuth2 JWT)
• Prior experience acting as Senior Backend Developer, Tech Lead or Solution Architect

Core Responsibilities :

System Design / Architecture :

• Design end-to-end backend systems with a focus on scalability, resilience, and maintainability
• Define service boundaries, data ownership, and communication patterns

Select and apply appropriate architecture patterns :

• Modular monoliths
• Microservices
• Event-driven systems
• Layered and hexagonal architectures
• Drive trade-off decisions (performance vs cost vs complexity)
• Produce architecture diagrams, ADRs, Data Flow Diagrams and technical design documents

Backend Engineering :

• Design and develop high-performance backend services using Python and FastAPI
• Build and maintain RESTful APIs and async services
• Handle concurrency, background processing, and IO-heavy workloads
• Enforce clean code, SOLID principles, and testability
• Lead code reviews with a focus on correctness, performance, and long-term design

Data Engineering :

• Design and optimize schemas in RDBMS (PostgreSQL/MySQL)
• Indexing, query optimization, transactions, isolation levels
• Design data models for NoSQL systems (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, etc.)
• Choose the right data store based on access patterns and consistency needs
• Handle migrations, versioning, and backward compatibility

Distributed Systems :

• Design systems that handle :
• Partial failures
• Retries, timeouts, and idempotency
• Horizontal scaling
• Experience with message brokers and async communication (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
• Understand consistency models, eventual consistency, and data replication

DevOps / Cloud :

• Work in cloud environments (AWS / Azure / GCP)
• Containerize services using Docker
• Deploy using CI/CD pipelines
• Understand Kubernetes concepts (pods, services, autoscaling) or managed alternatives
• Collaborate with DevOps/SRE on observability, logging, and monitoring

Technical Leadership :

• Act as technical owner for backend systems
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers
• Set engineering standards and best practices
• Work closely with product and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical designs