Senior Software Engineer (Python/Django)

Job: Senior Software Engineer (Python/Django)

TR Ref: CLDB/TR13616

Location: Remote Working, with occasional meetups so must be UK based (ideally within 2 hrs of Surrey)

This FinTech company has a powerful AI/ML-driven data platform that's transforming the way businesses connect with their customers and partners. Enjoying stellar growth, they’re now on track to double revenue in the next 12 months (again!), so this is a rare opportunity to join at such a critical inflection point.

We’re recruiting a Senior Software Engineer to join a small, high-impact engineering team. Someone who is capable of stepping into any part of their complex, Django-based, direct-to-consumer system (back-end, front-end, cloud, mobile, integrations), understanding it, improving it and ensuring business continuity.

You will need to understand the why behind complex systems, ideally with a solid appreciation of system design and architecture - this is certainly not a role where you will simply be working tickets! You will also be contributing strategically to help set/steer their technical direction.

What you will be responsible for:

Core Engineering

• Backend development in Python/Django - building and maintaining the API layer, business logic and data models.
• Database design and management with PostgreSQL - schema evolution, query performance, data integrity
• Async processing - working with their task/worker system for background operations (risk checks, payment processing, document generation)
• [Occasional Frontend contribution, as needed, using Vue.js for their customer quote journey and internal tooling]

Integrations & Partnerships

• Building and maintaining integrations with partners, including price comparison sites, risk data providers, payment processors and regulatory data sources
• Designing API endpoints for new partner onboarding
• Understanding and working with external APIs across quoting, credit/risk assessment, fraud detection, validation and communications

Infrastructure, Security & Production Health

• Owning the health and security of production systems - monitoring, troubleshooting, ensuring uptime and maintaining security across their Linux-based infrastructure
• Managing and evolving their AWS infrastructure (EC2, RDS, S3, SES etc.)
• Contributing to their infrastructure-as-code migration (Pulumi)
• Supporting CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes
• Participating in system upgrades, inc. Python, Django, PostgreSQL and OS-level modernisation

Product Expansion

• Contributing to the development of new products as the company expands into adjacent markets
• Working with product and compliance stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Designing systems that are multi-product and multi-brand capable from the outset

Technical Leadership

• Becoming a full knowledge holder across the platform - backend, frontend, infrastructure, integrations and business logic
• Contributing to architectural decisions - codebase restructuring, reducing technical debt, deployment strategy
• Writing and maintaining technical documentation to ensure knowledge is shared and recoverable
• Mentoring and supporting other team members as the team grows

Tech stack: Python, Django, Linux/Unix, HTML/CSS/JS, SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), Vue.js, ORMs, RESTful APIs, AWS, Docker, Git and various third-party integrations (web and mobile).

What Tech Skills Are Needed:

• At least 5 years hands-on Python and Django expertise, confident navigating and extending a large and complex Django codebase
• PostgreSQL experience, inc. schema design, migrations and performance tuning
• Strong Linux/Unix skills - you live in the terminal and will be confident with SysAdmin, debugging production issues via SSH, reading logs, managing processes and understanding how a Linux server runs end to end
• Docker - you use containers as part of your daily development and deployment workflow
• Security-conscious mindset - you understand application security fundamentals, data protection principles (GDPR, DPIAs), encryption at rest and in transit and secure handling of PII. You think about security as part of everyday development, not as an afterthought
• API design and integration - you've built and consumed RESTful APIs, worked with third-party integrations and handled authentication flows
• AWS experience - you don't need to be an expert, but you will likely have deployed and managed production workloads
• Frontend competency ie you can work productively in a Vue.js or similar modern JS framework codebase. [You don't need to be a frontend specialist, but you can't be afraid of it]
• Version control - comfortable with Git workflows, branching strategies and working across multiple repositories
• Desirable skills include: Experience in FinTech or other regulated industry where data protection compliance (GDPR, DPIA, ICO reporting) is part of daily work; Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code (Pulumi, Terraform, CloudFormation etc); Experience tackling technical debt (major version upgrades, codebase restructuring, improving test coverage and CI/CD in a production system); Configuration management (SaltStack, Ansible etc); Mobile app experience.

Other skills required:

• Effective remote worker. You know how to stay productive, communicate asynchronously, manage your own time and maintain visibility without being in an office
• Self-directed and autonomous - you can take a loosely defined problem, investigate, plan and deliver without constant supervision or micromanagement
• Business acumen - you understand that code serves a business. You can engage with commercial requirements, ask the right questions and make technical decisions that align with business goals, not just engineering preferences
• Project and workload management - you can juggle multiple priorities, estimate work realistically and keep things moving without someone managing your backlog for you
• Effective communicator. You can explain technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Why Join?

• Base Salary of £70-80K along with generous Equity / Share Options offering real wealth creation potential.
• High impact. Your decisions and work will directly shape the future of the platform, the company and potentially an entire industry.
• Rapid Growth. They are scaling rapidly, so this is an exciting time to join
• Cutting-edge challenges inc AI/ML, working with large datasets, third-party integrations and scalable, high-performance architecture
• Flexible remote working with only occasional meetups
• Continuous learning – encouraged to experiment with new tech