Backend Developer - Technical Lead

Job Purpose

We are looking for a contract Backend Engineer to help build and refine analytical, data-driven web applications

and supporting infrastructure for a quantitative trading firm. This role is hands-on and implementation-driven,

working with production microservices, databases, and automated workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and upgrade microservices and workflows written in Python/Pandas
• Design and maintain RESTful APIs that serve time-series and quantitative data
• Integrate with database storage across MongoDB, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL
• Reason about business logic as it relates to backend data transformations
• Collaborate with front-end developers to design APIs that provide the necessary data to the UI
• Make informed decisions about where certain pieces of business logic belong in the stack
• Optimize query performance for large datasets and frequent updates
• Debug issues related to job dependency management and data integrity
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines for backend services
• Ensure system reliability through monitoring, logging, and alerting
  
  

• Strong experience with Python (3.9+) and data manipulation libraries (Pandas, NumPy)
• Proficiency building microservices using FastAPI or similar async frameworks
• Solid understanding of enterprise-level data architecture and design patterns
• Experience with both relational (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB) databases
• Good understanding of SQL Server stored procedures with the ability to alter or create them as
  
  

• Working knowledge of containers (Docker) and cloud platforms (GCP/Kubernetes)
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs collaboratively with UI developers
• Strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and design
  
  

• Knowledge of code performance optimization and memory efficiency
• Familiarity with message brokers and event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Pub/Sub)
• Experience with version control (Git) including branching strategies, code reviews, and PR workflows
• Understanding of authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth2, JWT, API keys)
• Ability to work independently within an existing, complex codebase
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills in distributed systems
  
  

• Experience with financial, trading, or analytical applications
• Full proficiency handling time-series data as well as streaming/real-time data
• Familiarity with market data from industry vendors such as Bloomberg, Factset, or Refinitiv
• Experience with task scheduling and orchestration tools (Airflow, Prefect, or similar)
• Focus on software testing and validation, including unit, integration, and performance testing
• Knowledge of caching strategies (Redis, Memcached) for high-throughput systems
• Exposure to infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Helm, Kustomize)
• Experience with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, or similar)