Lead Software Engineer (Python)

Prosum; Santa Monica (CA); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 128,000; Full time

Job summary

Prosum is seeking a senior Python Software Engineer in Santa Monica for a hybrid, contract role. You will design and ship Python services that empower Data Engineers with metadata insights and tooling across a massive enterprise data environment.

The role emphasizes learning quickly, strong problem-solving, and collaboration across teams. Familiarity with data governance, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, and graph-enabled tooling is a plus.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience shipping production systems at scale.
• Strong programming fundamentals in Python and distributed systems considerations.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and leading cross-team efforts.

Skills

12+ years of software engineering

Strong programming fundamentals

Mentoring senior engineers

Python

Tools

Airflow

Spark

Databricks

Snowflake

OpenSearch

Neptune

GraphQL

Acryl DataHub

Alation

Job description

## Lead Software Engineer (Python)**Santa Monica,CA90404**Employment Type:ContractJob Number: 25678Remote Options: Hybrid## Job Description**Lead Software Engineer (Python)** **Pay Range:**$80/hour to $93/hour This is a senior software engineering role on a team that builds intelligent tooling for Data Engineers. The team is **not** responsible for building traditional data pipelines or data models. Instead, they build software that helps engineers understand and navigate a massive enterprise data environment. For example, the company has **hundreds of thousands of Snowflake tables**. The team ingests and manages metadata about those tables, including:* Ownership* Relationships* Lineage* Columns* Upstream and downstream dependencies* Organizational contextThe team makes this knowledge searchable and usable so engineers can more effectively understand and navigate the data environment. The team is also building **intelligent and agentic systems** that can use this knowledge to answer questions and help engineers interact with the data environment. **What We're Looking For** The successful candidate will have a passion for technology and solid coding skills. Knowledge of specific technologies is helpful but less important than the ability to learn quickly. We value team members who aren't afraid to dive deep when required, think for themselves, and have strong communication and teamwork skills. We're looking for a strong **Python Software Engineer** with excellent problem-solving and system-design skills. Experience with the following is highly relevant:* Search technologies such as **OpenSearch or Elasticsearch*** Knowledge graphs* Metadata platforms* AI and agentic systemsData experience is helpful, but **this is fundamentally a Software Engineering role—not a Data Engineering role.** **Basic Qualifications*** 12+ years of software engineering experience shipping production systems at scale.* Strong programming fundamentals in at least one primary language (e.g., Python, TypeScript, Java) and a working understanding of distributed systems trade-offs around consistency, latency, and cost at scale.* Production experience with AWS (or a comparable cloud), including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and automated deployment workflows for services running at scale.* Track record of leading cross-team technical efforts and mentoring senior engineers.**Preferred Qualifications*** Experience building internet-scale platforms (high-throughput ingestion, multi-region, low-latency serving).* Hands-on experience with several of: Airflow, Spark, Databricks, Snowflake - including tuning and operating these in production.* Familiarity with search/graph systems (OpenSearch, Neptune) and API frameworks (GraphQL).* Experience with data catalog platforms (Acryl DataHub, Alation), data governance and PII handling.* Background in knowledge graph systems and graph algorithms.