Senior Backend Engineer (Python / Go)

RapidFort, Inc.; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

Health, dental, and vision insurance

PTO and holidays

Flexible work arrangements

Professional development

Job summary

RapidFort, Inc. is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and maintain high-performance microservices using Python and Go.

You will own service design, APIs, and scalability, collaborating with product teams and cloud platforms to ensure robust, secure systems. Ideal candidates have 7+ years in backend development, deep experience with distributed systems, and strong knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend development in production environments.
• Experience building and operating microservices.
• Cloud deployment experience (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Strong knowledge of Python and Go and RESTful APIs.
• Security best practices in API design (JWT, OAuth2).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated deployments.
• Proficient in observability with metrics/logging/tracing.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain scalable backend microservices in Go.
• Collaborate with product and frontend teams to define API specs.
• Ensure services are deployed, monitored, and scaled in Kubernetes.
• Participate in code reviews, architecture discussions, and planning.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues to ensure high availability.
• Drive continuous improvement in tooling, processes, and infrastructure.

Skills

Python

Go (Golang)

REST APIs

Security (JWT, OAuth2)

Distributed systems

AWS/Azure/GCP

CI/CD

Observability

Git

Testing (unit/integration)

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Git

Keycloak

Clickhouse

MySQL

Redis

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Senior Backend Engineer (Python / Go)

Overview

We are seeking a skilled and passionate Senior Backend Engineer to join our team, focusing on the design, development, and maintenance of high-performance, scalable microservices. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in Go (Golang), and a deep understanding of distributed systems architecture.

Essential Qualifications

Technical Skills

• Programming Languages - Python (Deep expertise with frameworks like FastAPI, Flask, or Django) - Advanced

• Programming Languages - Go (Golang) (Experience building robust, high-concurrency microservices) - Expert

• Microservices / Architecture - Designing, developing, and deploying RESTful APIs - Expert

• Security - Keycloak, API authentication, JWT - Advanced

• Databases - Realtime analytics (Clickhouse) - Advanced

• Databases - Relational databases (MySQL) including complex query optimization - Advanced

• Databases - NoSQL databases (Redis) - Advanced

• Containerization / Orchestration - Kubernetes for deployment and scaling - Advanced

• Containerization / Orchestration - Docker container build - Advanced

• Testing - Writing comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests - Advanced

Core Experience

• 7+ years of professional experience in backend software development, with a significant focus on building and operating microservices in a production environment.

• Proven ability to work with and contribute to large-scale, distributed systems.

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) for deployment, monitoring, and scaling.

Desired Qualifications

Process & Tools

• CI/CD: Experience setting up and maintaining automated deployment pipelines

• Observability: Proficiency with monitoring and logging tools

• Source Control: Expertise in Git and collaborative workflows

Architecture & Design

• Familiarity with event-driven architectures and streaming data processing

• Experience with security best practices in API design (e.g., OAuth 2.0, JWT, input validation)

• Knowledge of performance tuning and optimization techniques for both Python and Go applications

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain scalable and reliable backend microservices using Go

• Collaborate with product managers and front‑end teams to define API specifications and integration points

• Ensure services are deployed, monitored, and scaled efficiently in a Kubernetes environment

• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and planning sessions

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues, ensuring high availability and performance

• Drive continuous improvement in development processes, tooling, and infrastructure

Must-have skills for a Senior Backend / Microservices Engineer (owner-level)

Production microservices ownership (not just "worked on")

• Has owned at least 1-2 services end-to-2 (design -> build -> deploy -> on-call -> incident fixes -> scaling)

• Comfortable with service boundaries, APIs, versioning, backward compatibility, SLAs/SLOs

System design & architecture (senior bar)

• Can design systems with tradeoffs: latency, throughput, cost, reliability

• Patterns: idempotency, retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, async workflows, queues, eventual consistency

• Data design: relational vs NoSQL, caching, indexing, migrations, multi-tenant considerations (if relevant)

Strong debugging & problem-solving in real-world scenarios

• Can take an ambiguous production issue and drive it to resolution

• Uses a structured approach: reproduce -> isolate -> instrument -> hypothesis -> validate -> fix -> prevent

Linux fundamentals (practical, daily-use)

• Confident with commands/tools like: ps/top/htop, journalctl, systemctl, netstat/ss, lsof, curl, grep/sed/awk, strace (bonus), log parsing

• Understands networking basics (DNS, TLS, ports, timeouts)

Docker + container runtime competence

• Can explain Dockerfiles, layers, multi-stage builds, image size/security

• Debug containers: env vars, volumes, entrypoints, networking, resource limits

Observability / logging / diagnostics

• Strong in structured logging, correlation IDs, trace context

• Metrics + tracing + logs as a system

• Datadog experience is a must-have , or a very credible equivalent (Prometheus/Grafana + OpenTelemetry + ELK) with proof they can ramp fast

Platform maturity

• CI/CD, release processes, rollback strategies

• Basic security and reliability hygiene (secrets mgmt, least privilege, rate limiting)

Compensation

Compensation & Benefits

$140,000 - $200,000 USD per year (depending on experience and qualifications)

Benefits

• 401(k) retirement plan

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• Paid time off (PTO) and company holidays

• Flexible work arrangements

• Professional development and training support

• Performance-based bonuses (if applicable)