Python Developer Lead

Lead Python Developer- AWS & Distributed Systems

AWS | Integration Systems | 8-10+ 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.

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 andstayinsync at production scale
• Translatebusiness 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, andECS/EKSwhere 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 andinventory 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 howtheir decisions affect the wider system and the engineers building against it