Senior Software Engineer (python)

Lead Python Developer

Location : San Diego, CA

Employment Type : Full-Time

Positions with Salary Ranges : $160K–$220K

Our engineering team thrives on collaboration, ownership, and pushing boundaries—from robust backend systems to emerging AI integrations. If you've led transformative projects and love mentoring emerging talent, this is your chance to shape our core infrastructure while aligning with our exciting AI roadmap.

The Role As our Lead Python Developer , you'll spearhead the evolution of our backend ecosystem, guiding a tight-knit team of 4 engineers through a high-stakes migration from monolith to microservices architecture. Need to have web app experience.

You'll own the technical vision for web applications that drive user experiences, ensuring seamless scalability and reliability in a dynamic AWS environment. This is hands-on leadership : 60% coding / architecting, 40% strategy and team growth.

While your focus is on rock-solid Python / Django foundations, you'll collaborate cross-functionally with our AI / ML squad via a dotted-line reporting structure.

Expect to influence timelines for GenAI agent deployments and new ML pipelines—opportunities to contribute insights without diving deep into the AI buildout, keeping your plate full of backend excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Participate as a Lead in Architectural Overhaul : Drive the decomposition of our legacy monolith into resilient microservices, optimizing for performance, fault tolerance, and maintainability using Python and Django.
• Build & Scale Web Apps : Design, develop, and deploy feature-rich web applications, from API gateways to user-facing services, leveraging Django's ORM, RESTful APIs, and real-time components.
• Champion CI / CD Excellence : Implement and refine automated pipelines with tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or AWS CodePipeline, ensuring rapid, reliable deployments across dev, staging, and prod.
• AWS Mastery : Architect cloud-native solutions on AWS (EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3), focusing on cost-efficiency, security (IAM, VPCs), and high availability.
• Team Leadership : Mentor and grow a team of 4 mid-level developers —conduct code reviews, foster agile practices, and align on sprint goals to hit aggressive milestones.
• Cross-Team Synergy : Partner with AI / ML leads to roadmap integrations (e.g., exposing microservices for GenAI agents or ML data feeds), providing backend support without owning the AI stack.
• Innovation & Optimization : Proactively tackle tech debt, monitor system health (e.g., via CloudWatch), and experiment with emerging Python tools to boost efficiency.

What We're Looking For

Nice-to-Haves