Senior Back-End Developer

• Designing and developing robust server-side applications and APIs supporting the CMRE Data Management Program of Work;
• Building and maintaining the CMRE Data Catalogue, Data Domain Model, and Data Sharing Workflows;
• Translating architectural designs and specifications into production-grade, secure, and high-performance code;
• Working within an Agile development team under the guidance of the Software Architect;
• Taking end-to-end ownership of delivered features, including technical design, implementation, testing, and deployment;
• Ensuring high standards of code quality, security, scalability, and performance;
• Participating in code reviews to maintain and improve codebase quality;
• Mentoring and supporting junior developers through technical guidance and knowledge sharing;
• Contributing to architectural discussions and technical decision-making;
• Proactively identifying, communicating, and mitigating technical risks and impediments;
• Providing clear and timely communication on progress, issues, and blockers to the team lead and project management;
• Collaborating closely with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure successful delivery of solutions

• Python: Advanced proficiency; clean, idiomatic code; familiarity with the ecosystem (virtual environments, packaging, type hints, async/await)
• Frameworks: Production experience with FastAPI famwork and async best practices
• OOP & design patterns: Solid object-oriented design skills; familiarity with common design patterns (factory, strategy, repository, dependency injection)
• Performance: Profiling, caching strategies, connection pooling, async processing, background task queues (Celery, Dramatiq, or equivalent)
• RESTful APIs: Resource modelling, versioning, error handling, pagination, OpenAPI / Swagger documentation
• Data formats: JSON, JSON Schema validation; familiarity with serialisation libraries (Pydantic, Marshmallow)
• Event-driven systems: Message brokers (RabbitMQ, RedisQueue, Kafka, etc.), pub/sub patterns, async task processing
• Relational databases: Strong SQL skills; experience with PostgreSQL and/or SQL Server; schema design, indexing, query optimisation, migrations
• NoSQL databases: Working knowledge of at least one document, key-value, or search store (MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch)
• ORM & data access: Experience with ORMs (SQLAlchemy, Django ORM) and understanding
• Docker: Writing Dockerfiles (multi-stage builds), Docker Compose for local development, image optimisation
• Kubernetes: Basic understanding of K8s concepts (pods, services, deployments, ConfigMaps) for deploying and debugging applications
• Linux: Comfortable with the command line; shell scripting, process management, file permissions, networking basics
• Testing: TDD, unit testing (pytest), integration testing, mocking, code coverage; awareness of contract testing
• CI/CD: Building and maintaining pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or equivalent); automated linting, testing, and deployment
• Version control: Advanced Git usage, branching strategies (GitFlow, trunk-based), pull/merge requests, rebasing, conflict resolution
• Code quality: Static analysis, linting (Ruff, flake8, mypy), code review best practices, documentation (docstrings, ADRs)
• Secure coding: OWASP Top 10 awareness, input validation, output encoding, secrets management
• Authentication & authorisation: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT; experience integrating with identity providers (Keycloak, Entra ID, or equivalent)
• API security: Rate limiting, CORS, TLS, API key management
• Architecture literacy: Ability to read and contribute to architectural documentation (C4, UML); understanding of microservices, event-driven, and layered patterns
• Agile: Active participation in sprint ceremonies, backlog refinement, estimation, and retrospectives
• Communication: Clear reporting of progress and blockers; collaboration with architects, front-end developers, QA, DevOps, and UX designers
• English proficiency: Excellent written and spoken English in a professional/international context

Desirable requirements:

• Knowledge of data management principles and practices
• Experience in working with metadata standards such as: Dublin Core, ISO 19115, STANAG 2586
• Knowledge of Semantic Web and related standards and technologies: W3C DCAT, RDF, Apache Jena, etc.
• Microsoft Azure: Entra ID, Azure DevOps, Key Vault, etc.
• Cloud-native development: Managed databases, serverless functions, environment configuration, cloud logging and monitoring
• Logging & monitoring: Structured logging, centralised log aggregation, application metrics (Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent)
• Distributed tracing: OpenTelemetry instrumentation for backend services
• LLM frameworks: Experience with orchestration frameworks (e.g. LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.) and LLM gateway/routing libraries (LiteLLM)
• RAG pipelines: Document ingestion, embeddings, vector stores (pgvector, Qdrant, Elasticsearch), retrieval strategies
• AI-assisted development: Prompt engineering for code generation; familiarity with AI coding assistants and their effective use in workflows