Python Fast API Architect

Experience: 15+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years at Principal Architect / Senior IC level

Must Have Engineering Experience 5+ years building and operating production backend systems. Owns features end-to-end: design, implementation, testing, deployment, support. Strong proficiency in Python.

API & Service Design Builds production APIs with a modern web framework (FastAPI or similar). Comfortable with asynchronous programming and async/sync trade-offs. Designs clear request/response contracts and validates inputs.

Databases, Data Modeling, and Data Processing Strong relational fundamentals: schema design, indexing, query performance. Hands-on with an ORM (SQLAlchemy or equivalent) and writing non-trivial SQL. Evolves production schemas safely via versioned migrations. Builds data pipelines: ingest $B"(J validate $B"(J transform $B"(J persist $B"(J export. Works fluently with tabular data (Excel, Parquet, CSV).

Cloud & Delivery Deploying and operating services on a cloud provider (Azure strongly preferred). Containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipelines.

Nontechnical Can clearly explain trade-offs to engineers and non-engineers. Operates independently, but with frequent communication. Asks clarifying questions early and keeps team informed on progress and blockers. Comfortable with ambiguity and drives problems to resolution.

Nice to Have Frontend awareness (React/TypeScript) sufficient to collaborate on API contracts. Front end / full stack development experience (can build features, do code reviews) is a plus. Scheduled / long-running background jobs in multi-instance deployments (locking, idempotency, retries). Finance / FP&A / portfolio analytics domain experience.