Senior Python Developer - AWS

Senior Python Developer - AWS & Distributed Systems

AWS | Integration Systems | 10+ Years | Multiple Openings

The Work

You will build and evolve a large-scale integration platform for a leading player in the distribution and e-commerce industry, connecting customer-facing storefronts with warehouse and enterprise systems across order management, inventory synchronization, product catalogs, and system interoperability.

Python is your primary engineering language. You will build production-grade applications and services, work hands-on with AWS, and make important decisions about how the platform should be designed and operated. This includes deciding what should run on Lambda versus a container, what should be event-driven versus synchronous, and what should be built in-house versus bought.

As a senior engineer, you will also take ownership of important architectural decisions and help other engineers, including our Node.js/TypeScript team, implement those decisions properly. You do not need to be a Python-only engineer. You should be comfortable reaching for Node.js or another technology when the problem calls for it.

Note: We currently have two openings for this role. One requires a valid AWS certification as a condition of hire; the other does not. Both openings require the same depth of real, hands-on AWS experience described below. If you are unsure which opening fits you, apply anyway and mention your certification status.

What You Will Own

• Build and evolve Python applications and services that form part of the integration platform
• Help design how storefronts, warehouse systems, and enterprise systems communicate and stay in sync at production scale
• Translate business and product requirements into practical technical designs
• Own and influence architectural decisions across APIs, event-driven systems, asynchronous processing, databases, messaging, caching, security, and observability
• Design and implement AWS infrastructure across serverless and containerized workloads, including Lambda, API Gateway, S3, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, DynamoDB, RDS, CloudWatch, IAM, and ECS/EKS where relevant
• Make trade-offs between serverless, containerized, and traditional deployment models based on cost, performance, scalability, and maintainability
• Choose Python frameworks and libraries based on the problem at hand rather than defaulting to familiar tools
• Contribute to engineering standards and design reviews for critical systems such as order management and inventory synchronization
• Mentor engineers and help raise the technical quality of the wider engineering team, including the Node.js/TypeScript team
• Work directly with Product and Business leadership on technical strategy and roadmap decisions
• Investigate production problems and use what you learn to improve system design and engineering practices

Must-Have

Python Engineering

• Strong production experience designing and building Python applications and services, not just scripting or maintenance work
• Working understanding of Python internals, including concurrency, performance, testing, packaging, and long-term maintainability
• Experience building backend services and APIs that operate in production

Systems & Architecture

• Experience designing or significantly influencing distributed, production-grade systems
• Solid grounding in API design, event-driven architecture, asynchronous processing, databases, messaging, caching, security, and observability
• Ability to evaluate architectural trade-offs and explain why one approach is better for a particular problem
• Experience taking ownership of technical decisions and seeing them through implementation and production

AWS

• Real, hands-on production experience with AWS Lambda and serverless architecture, not lab exercises or side projects
• Working fluency across core AWS services including API Gateway, S3, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, DynamoDB, RDS, CloudWatch, IAM, and ECS/EKS
• Understanding of how AWS services combine into a coherent production architecture rather than experience limited to individual services
• For one of our two openings, a current AWS certification is mandatory. For the other, certification is not required, but the depth of AWS experience must be equivalent

Breadth

• Professional experience with Node.js/TypeScript, strong enough to understand and contribute to production services
• Comfort picking up an unfamiliar technology when the problem requires it rather than defaulting to what you already know

Technical Leadership

• Experience mentoring engineers, guiding technical initiatives, or influencing engineering direction
• Ability to communicate technical decisions and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Good to Have

• AWS certifications beyond the certification required for the applicable opening
• Hands-on Terraform or AWS CDK experience
• Docker and Kubernetes experience
• CI/CD and modern DevOps practices
• Microservices and event-driven architecture at scale
• Experience in product engineering or fast-paced technology environments
• Familiarity with AI-assisted or agentic software engineering tools and workflows

What Strong Looks Like Here

• You can take a business requirement and turn it into a practical system design with clear trade-offs
• You have built production Python systems where performance, reliability, scalability, and maintainability mattered
• When you recommend Lambda over a container, or the reverse, you can explain the operational and technical reasoning behind the decision
• You have experienced a real production failure, understood why it happened, and changed your engineering approach as a result
• You can explain an architectural decision clearly enough for another engineer to implement it correctly
• You are comfortable working across Python, Node.js, AWS, and other technologies without being tied to a particular stack
• You think about how your technical decisions affect the engineers who build, operate, and maintain the system

Who This Is Not For

• Candidates whose AWS experience is limited to managed platforms or PaaS abstractions without meaningful hands-on experience with AWS services
• Candidates who have configured serverless functions for side projects but have never operated serverless systems in production
• Candidates whose Python experience is primarily scripting, automation, or maintenance rather than production application development
• Candidates looking for a narrowly scoped individual contributor role with no mentoring or technical leadership responsibility
• Candidates with extensive experience but little evidence of owning or significantly influencing technical decisions
• Candidates who think about individual services in isolation without considering how their decisions affect the wider system and the engineers building against it