Senior Software Engineer

Fresh Consulting; United States; On-site; USD 103,000 - 117,000; Full time

Job summary

Fresh Consulting is seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our team in developing distributed, cutting-edge applied AI systems. This is a full-time role working directly with our engineering team to drive technical innovation and mentor mid-level and junior engineers.

You will design and implement production-grade distributed microservices on Linux, advance service mesh and contract-first APIs, build scalable data pipelines, and define protobufs and gRPC contracts.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience building distributed backend systems on Linux.
• Expert-level Python programming and software architecture skills.
• Strong system design with focus on APIs, service boundaries, fault tolerance.
• Fluency in Linux environments; shell, logs, processes, networks, and filesystems.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the architecture and development of production-grade distributed microservice systems on Linux.
• Advance service mesh, contract-first APIs, and inter-service communication patterns.
• Build scalable data processing pipelines and high-throughput service infrastructure.
• Design and evolve protobuf contracts and gRPC service definitions.
• Provide technical guidance to junior team members.

Skills

Python programming

Linux proficiency

Distributed systems

System design

Technical communication

APIs / gRPC

Tools

Docker

gRPC

Protobuf

CI/CD

Version control

Job description

Position Overview We're seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our team in developing distributed, cutting-edge applied AI systems. This is a full-time position working directly with our engineering team to drive technical innovation and mentor mid-level and junior engineers.

What You'll Do

• Contribute to the architecture and development of production-grade distributed microservice systems running on Linux
• Drive technical initiatives to advance our service mesh, contract-first APIs, and inter-service communication patterns
• Build scalable data processing pipelines and high-throughput service infrastructure
• Design and evolve protobuf contracts and gRPC service definitions across the platform
• Provide technical guidance to junior team members

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of professional experience developing distributed backend systems on Linux
• Deep curiosity for all software and systems architecture topics
• Expert-level Python programming and software architecture skills
• Strong system design skills with a focus on service boundaries, API contracts, and fault tolerance
• Fluency operating in Linux environments — comfortable living in the shell, reading logs, and reasoning about process, network, and filesystem behavior
• Excellence in technical communication and documentation

Required Technical Skills

• Expertise in prompt engineering and AI-assisted development as a daily practice — Claude Code, Augment, Copilot, or equivalent is a force multiplier in your workflow, not a novelty
• Expertise in designing and operating microservice architectures at scale
• Deep experience with gRPC and Protocol Buffers — schema evolution, streaming RPCs, interceptors, and contract-first development
• Proficiency with version control and CI/CD practices
• Experience with containerized deployments (Docker on Linux hosts), service discovery, and distributed computing
• Strong grasp of observability: distributed tracing, structured logging, and metrics

Highly Competitive Candidates Will Also Bring

• Previous experience in manufacturing, industrial automation, or quality control systems
• Experience with monorepo build systems (Bazel, Buck, Pants) and polyglot protobuf code generation
• Familiarity with backwards/forwards compatibility patterns and API versioning at scale
• Experience with real-time processing and edge computing constraints on resource-constrained Linux devices
• Experience with configuration management and infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, Terraform) for Linux fleet operations

Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Range $75/hr – $85/hr.