Back-end Engineer - Python

Backend Engineer – Python

Location:

Denver, Seattle, San Francisco or Washington, DC

Working arrangement:

Hybrid

Compensation:

$150,000–$180,000 base salary plus equity

Employment type:

Full-time

About The Company

Join a venture-backed software company building modern infrastructure for satellite operations. The platform enables commercial and government customers to operate different spacecraft and constellations through one scalable software environment.

The company was founded by experienced engineers and satellite operators who saw an opportunity to replace fragmented, highly customized ground systems with modern, reusable software.

• Approximately 70 employees with a highly technical, engineering-led culture
• Meaningful equity and direct product influence
• Software supporting real commercial and government missions
• Small teams with significant technical ownership
• Opportunity to build foundational systems rather than maintain legacy software
• Collaborative environment with experienced engineers across software, aerospace and operations

The Role

We are looking for a Backend Engineer to build the foundational services behind a modern satellite-operations platform.

This is a hands-on product-engineering role focused primarily on production Python. It is not a DevOps or platform-infrastructure position. You will design and build backend services, APIs and data systems used by customers operating real spacecraft and distributed mission systems.

A space background is not required. Strong backend engineers from SaaS, telecom, networking, IoT, robotics, fintech or other complex technical environments are encouraged to apply.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build and maintain production Python backend services
• Develop scalable APIs and foundational platform capabilities
• Own features from technical design through testing, deployment and production support
• Build reliable services that process and distribute operational data
• Design integrations between internal services and external customer systems
• Work with relational and non-relational databases
• Improve service performance, reliability, observability and security
• Troubleshoot issues across applications, databases and distributed systems
• Collaborate with product, frontend, platform and aerospace engineering teams
• Help shape architecture and engineering standards as the platform scales
• Contribute to a fast-moving product environment with meaningful individual ownership

Required Experience

• At least three years of professional backend or full-stack software development
• Strong hands-on production Python experience
• Experience building APIs, microservices or other backend applications
• Practical AWS experience
• Experience working with databases and data models
• Understanding of testing, debugging and production software support
• Ability to clearly explain personal ownership, technical decisions and engineering tradeoffs
• Comfortable working independently within a collaborative startup environment

Nice to Have

• GraphQL or substantial REST API development
• Docker and Kubernetes
• Terraform or other infrastructure-as-code tools
• CI/CD and automated testing
• Event-driven or asynchronous architectures
• Distributed systems or high-volume data processing
• PostgreSQL, Redis or comparable data technologies
• DevSecOps or security-conscious application development
• Generative AI or LLM integrations
• Experience in telecom, networking, aerospace, robotics, IoT or remote-system operations

What Success Looks Like

• You can personally own a production service from design through deployment
• You write clean, maintainable and well-tested Python
• You understand how your services operate in production
• You can make thoughtful architectural decisions and explain the tradeoffs
• You are comfortable entering unfamiliar technical areas and learning quickly
• You take responsibility for outcomes rather than working within a narrowly defined task list

Eligibility

Due to the nature of the company’s commercial and government work, candidates must satisfy applicable U.S. export-control requirements.